


The Effect of Liberation: Past is Prologue

by Ecarden



Category: Blake's 7, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Child Death, Cycles in Cycles, Gen, Genocide, Shepard did more than two things before becoming a Spectre, Slow Burn Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 104,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29765232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ecarden/pseuds/Ecarden
Summary: The Liberator and her crew (well, some of them) escape the dystopia of Blake's 7 for the somewhat better universe of Mass Effect. Here's hoping things go better this time around.
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Neither Blake’s 7, nor Mass Effect belong to me. It is my belief that this constitutes fair use. If either of the copyright holders disagrees, please contact me and I will remove the content.
> 
> For those unfamiliar with Blake’s 7, I try explain the necessary bits as they come up. However, if you view Blake’s 7 as the dystopia to Star Trek’s utopia, you’ll probably be pretty close. But to give a specific example, the first episode details the backstory of main character Roj Blake.
> 
> *SPOILER ALERT*
> 
> Though amongst the most privileged citizens of the Federation, he was a leader of a dissident group which was destroyed. He was captured and coerced into denouncing his own movement, then his memory was erased. He was left alive as bait for the remaining dissidents, who attempted to contact him, only to be gunned down after succeeding. When his memory returns, the Federation responds by implanting memories in children that they’d been abused by him, allowing them to honestly testify to that. Blake is disgraced and sentenced to life on a prison planet. But he had managed to raise sufficient questions in the mind of his public defender that the man went on a successful search of exculpatory evidence. Unfortunately for the defense attorney, he was not sufficiently visible for his disappearance to need an explanation, so he’s simply murdered.
> 
> The rest of the series details the tiny rebellion’s lengthy and mostly futile struggle against the overwhelming forces of oppression and tyranny.
> 
> *BIGGER SPOILER ALERT*
> 
> They fail completely and all die. Probably.
> 
> *END BOTH LARGE AND SMALL SPOILER ALERTS*
> 
> Perhaps things will go better for them this time around. Or not. Either way, just a heads up, it’s a while before the actual crossover happens. Since I’m making a few changes to the backstory of Mass Effect, chapters will alternate between Blake’s 7 and Mass Effect until I’m finally able to bring them together.
> 
> For those who are familiar with Blake’s 7, it should be noted that though the events leading to the crossover will be occurring at the end of Season 2 of Blake’s 7, certain events from the later seasons did occur, most notably the events of Rumours of Death in season 3 (though obviously it occurred somewhat differently here). The other major differences are explained fairly clearly, but if you have specific questions, ask them in a review and I’ll respond as best I can.
> 
> Technology and distance are not consistently dealt with by Blake’s 7, so I’ve made some assumptions. They obviously aren’t using the relay system, nor is there any mass effect technology. Comparisons between the two are tricky and will be dealt with at some length once they actually begin to interact.
> 
> This is a duplicate of my story over at Fanfiction.net (under the same user name). I'm migrating it over and will migrate the other stuff over as Fanfiction.net's user interface has finally annoyed me too much. Please flag any issues caused by the migration.
> 
> Comments are always welcome.

## Solomon Bar—Excerpt from Grant Proposal

The artifacts variously known as the Daggers, God’s Balls and the Universe’s Jewels, have been studied since man first ascended into space. These massive artifacts measure more than fifteen kilometers in length, with the central partial sphere possessing a diameter of approximately five kilometers, dwarfing any human construction. These artifacts dot known space, seemingly at random.

Completely nonresponsive to probes, signals and weapons-fire alike, they are clearly the result of a technologically superior species which predates humanity by millennia. Even our most advanced optical telescopes looking out to the maximum range where such artifacts can be seen, using the speed of light limitation to look back in time more than ten thousand years cannot see a time before the artifacts were in place.

I propose a new set of studies of these artifacts, setting up a long term post atop one and attempting various forms of vibratory interaction, in an effort to see if I can remove a small portion of the material. Simultaneously, such equipment can be used to broadcast a wide array of signals, in an attempt to interact with the electronics which surely must lie within such a vast space construct.

The study of these artifacts consumed many great scientists and historians before the Federation barred private companies from studying them and refused to fund any further research expeditions. We cannot abandon this mystery of the ages merely because it has not, thus far, proven profitable.

* * *

## Civil Administration Response Memo

Strike paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 from the public announcement. Funding granted. Request for family to accompany him likewise granted. Security Division will assign you an escort and a ship to ensure this research project is not interrupted by pirates, or other traitors to the cause of human progress.

* * *

## Memo for Internal Security Division, From: Supreme Commander Alexei’s Office

Ensure that one of your covert operatives is included in the Bar Expedition. All reports from that agent are to go solely to this office.

* * *

## Operative Kale, Report 73

No progress. Bar has finally run out of things to try. However, he continues to expound upon the power and superiority of those who designed and constructed these artifacts, saying that we, his students, are simply too stupid to understand their importance. When asked about this over drinks later, he repeated his earlier fantasy about forming an alliance with the builders of these devices to overthrow the Federation (or Military Dictatorship as he calls it) and replace it with a truly ‘scientific’ and ‘progressive’ government.

As Bar’s efforts have now failed and he is not high enough profile for mental reconditioning to be necessary, I recommend termination of Bar and his expedition.

* * *

## Memo for Operative Kale, From: Supreme Commander Alexei’s Office

Recommendation Approved.

* * *

## CLASSIFIED-AAA CLEARANCE REQUIRED-Transcript, Appointment Meeting

Supreme Commander Alexei (‘Alexei’): Do you know why I’m choosing you as my second in command, Servalan?

Commander Servalan (‘Servalan’): Because my mother is on the high council and my father is president of Helti Pharmaceuticals?

Alexei: No. That’s why I could pick you as my successor, but there are a hundred other young officers with connections just as good as yours.

Servalan: Then I’d say it was because of my success at—

Alexei: It was because, despite being a treacherous, backstabbing bitch, who somehow manages to get all the credit and none of the blame, you do have one great redeeming feature.

Servalan: Besides getting all of the credit and none of the blame?

Alexei: That’s not a feature, that’s the result of massive amounts of hard work on your part, as we both now.

Servalan: Than what is my single redeeming feature?

Alexei: While everyone else is fighting the last war, or planning for the next war, you deal with the war in front of you. Which is why I have some files for you to review, independently. This terminal is not connected to any other and you will not connect it to any other. You will review all the files on it. Then you will come talk to me about what war you think we’re fighting.

Servalan: Very well, Supreme Commander.

* * *

## CLASSIFIED-HIGHEST LEVEL-Survey 2019 File Excerpt

The remaining planetary infrastructure is in ruins, however it was clearly an advanced society with multiple orbitals, based on the debris pattern. All the places where the infrastructure is linked however has been blasted into glass. _See attached calculations regarding the size/power of the plasma bolt launcher necessary to cause such an effect through atmosphere._

This is consistent with our discoveries on other worlds. Carbon dating confirms the damage occurred in approximately the same time frame as the others as well. _See attached report_. We’re attempting to translate some of the writings we found, but have had no success so far. _See attached data file_. Of particular interest is the attached image. _Image attached._ This appears to be the last of the alien’s creations. We have no idea why one of their last acts would have been to carve this in the wall of a cave system, but the massive carving is most impressive. My researchers have taken to calling it the Kraken, after the ancient Earth legend, however, even in the most absurd versions of this aquatic myth, the creature did not shoot fire out of its tentacles.

We will proceed with our survey, but I feel I must report that at this point there seems to be little doubt what we will find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard is having a BAD day. Maelon Heplorn gets a second chance. Nihlus is just doing his job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply. I’m very aware that vanguards in Mass Effect 1 couldn’t charge. I’m choosing to treat that as a gameplay limitation, not some sort of technical development that occurred in the interim. In other words, vanguards could always charge. Similarly, biotic and tech explosions always existed. 
> 
> On a similar theory, biotic powers require significant energy, leaving biotics with a very high metabolism and unable to spam powers the way characters could in the game. I believe everything else is canon compliant, if not, please drop me a line in a review or PM and I’ll correct it.

## 2176 CE, Elysium

1st Lieutenant Ashley Shepard did not scream her frustration as the low caste Batarian raced towards their sole remaining anti-aircraft battery. His rail thin body was weighted down with shield generators and high explosives and the battery was well back from the front lines, which was why it had survived so long. There was time to intercept him, especially if she’d had support. Unfortunately, the first suicide run had taken Commander McCauley’s troops by surprise, blowing apart the barricade they’d built and killing the commander and his best troops.

Some part of her couldn’t blame the commander, suicide bombing wasn’t a tactic pirates generally used. She’d seen it before though. Batarian state troops used it. A low caste soldier who successfully carried out such an assault would gain a full jump in caste status for their family. She’d seen that on Mindoir. This attack must include Batarian regulars. She sneered. Not that the Alliance would believe that, any more than they’d believed it about Mindoir.

After what seemed like an eternity of moving through broken buildings, her movements and the Batarian’s desperate sprint put them in line with each other and she **charged** forward. The heavy shielding meant that his slight frame was only staggered, but that was enough to knock the sprinting soldier to the ground. She leaned over, stomping hard on his hand, pinning his desperate attempt to release the dead man’s switch. A hand extended and the Kessler pistol passed through his shield and pressed into his upper right eye, his rising scream was cut off by the shredder round destroying his skull.

Shepard pried open the Batarian’s broken fingers, maintaining pressure on the dead man’s switch and pulled his corpse into a fireman’s carry and began to jog towards the gap in the barricade which the slaver scum were still streaming through, trying to reach the civilians clustered in the colony’s heart. A **charge** had her in amongst them. They were only staggered, but their surprise was enough to let her drop the body and **charge** away. The wires connecting the bombs to the dead man’s switch ripped as she raced away and the explosion vaporized the enemy vanguard.

The pirates had lost a great many of their most disciplined troops in the initial assault. Fires in the distance spoke of pirates and slavers who’d broken off and were looting the outbuildings of the colony rather than attempting to shatter the remaining defenses. Shepard’s smile at the sight of the dead Batarians was an ugly thing on her usually pretty face, white teeth flashing against black skin.

The few marines still alive and mobile were slowly gathering, trying to move back up to the remnants of the barricade as the enemy reordered themselves. Her smile vanished when she saw the marines moving out. Though her eyes remained firm, there were signs of the exhaustion that was creeping up on her. Fighting her way to her fellow marines had been difficult enough and now she was, as far as she knew, the ranking officer on the planet. Fortunately, her full helmet blocked her exhaustion and nervousness from view, as completely as it had blocked her cruel smile. “Marines, fall back to the next cross street and cover the intersection.”

They glanced back at her, none of them were ranked higher than corporal. There were eight of them. Eight out of almost a hundred…The single corporal waved the troops back and signaled with his hands to send half the survivors to one building, the other half to another building which would let them set up a crossfire, then he trudged over to her and saluted sharply. She winced at that, saluting was as good as calling up a sniper and telling him there was someone worth shooting. For a moment she wondered if it was deliberate, but these weren’t N qualified troops. They were barely more than militia.

“Any non-walking wounded?” She asked, moving them both under cover.

“Yes sir, I have three of my people getting them back to the hospital.”

She nodded shortly. “Add them to the defenses when they return. I’m going hunting, corporal.”

“We’ll hold the line, sir.”

“No, you won’t, corporal. You’ll bleed them here, mine your positions, then fall back, blow the mines. If you can find enough explosives do it again and again until you run out of explosives, or out of room to fall back. Then you’ll hold the line.”

“Aye, aye, sir and you’ll be?” He asked.

“Like I said corporal, I’m going hunting. I’ll see if I can’t scout them out and distract them. Radio in when you have contact, no talking. Three clicks for enemy contact, two if you’ve had to fall back, one if you’ve been overrun.” She didn’t know how they’d known to target the commander’s position, but comm intercepts were a good guess.

“Aye, aye, sir,” the corporal saluted again and dashed across the street to join his fellows. She ripped open the last of her ration packs, bit open the water tube, sucked a mouthful of the energy and vitamin infused drink to swallow the first set of pills then forced herself to swallow the flavorless, but nutrient rich paste that would give her the energy to keep using her biotics. At least for a while longer. She ran her omni-tool over her pistol and activated the illegal high explosive ammunition mod on her pistol. The heat produced by the modification wouldn’t be a problem as she wouldn’t be firing more than once before fleeing. The larger problem would be avoiding the Batarian bits the mod would create.

She touched the armor plate that covered the tiny vial of soil collected from Mindoir. Once her ritual before combat had included lowering her head to her chest and closing her eyes but that hadn’t survived N-School when taking her eyes off the field had gotten the instructor to yell so loud she’d been worried his larynx would burst. And then she’d been worried she’d bust his nose if he kept at it. She hadn’t of course, but she’d wanted to. “I will not forget. I will not forgive. Mindoir.”

* * *

A shadow slid through the alleys and hallways of the colony, as close to invisible as an N6 could manage. Evening was coming on. The time on her heads-up display was 21:23. The assault had begun at 14:36, right after her ship had landed. The leave had been ordered by Captain Chang, who believed in treating her people well. Whether they wanted it, or not. An amused grin crossed Shepard’s dark features at what the Captain would think when this report reached her.

The grin turned feral as she saw a group of Batarians spread out around the door to a colonial apartment building. Their gaze at the empty streets was desultory and they occasionally looked towards the open door and the smashing sounds as their superiors looted and destroyed. She cocked her head and listened carefully. There was some laughter, but neither screams, nor whimpers. There were no hostages to worry about. The building wasn’t designed for a siege. She circled it and smashed a window. That destruction was indistinguishable from that the invaders were wreaking and so it was not noticed. The hard-suit meant that going through the window was no trouble, not like before, when she’d left skin and blood behind with every window.

The room was a nursery. Almost against her will she checked the crib. There was neither body nor blood. She relaxed ever so slightly. The magnetic point on her pistol clicked against her armor as it locked into place. Her hand slid under the heavy central plate of her hard-suit and pulled out an old kitchen knife, its blade honed to a razor’s edge. There wasn’t even a whisper as the blade slid free from its sheath against her stomach. A knife was not a great weapon to use against someone in full body armor. There were always vulnerabilities, mostly at the joints, but they were hard to hit and it was easy to lose a knife in the body of your first target, even if you managed to hit it, and if you missed, then you might well break your own knife.

That was part of what made it so nice that Batarians traditionally left their helmets off. She moved slowly and listened carefully, going towards the noise. The door was open. She knelt and looked into the room from about a foot above the ground. The Batarian was ripping apart some young man’s wardrobe, searching for something worth stealing. He failed and pulled out his weapon, firing an incendiary round into the pile of clothes and giggled as it caught fire. He backed off, swearing as whatever gave the young man’s wardrobe its odd sheen proved to react explosively to fire. Shepard caught him as he came out the door, one hand lifting a jaw, exposing a throat, the other drove the blade in at the correct angle. Unlike Humans, Batarian veins in the neck were on either side of the spine, none were near the windpipe. In order to cut both airway and artery, you needed to go in at an angle and then rip out, just a slash was unlikely to sever the vein. It was a tricky thing to learn, but if the Alliance had an expert in killing Batarians, it was Lieutenant Shepard.

Arterial blood spurted, fountaining out of the wound in a manner that always surprised her and seemed vaguely comic, vaguely artificial, a feeling only enhanced by the detachment lent to her by her armor. She neither felt the heat of the blood, nor smelled the shit as the Batarian voided himself.

A quick pat down of the corpse gave her three grenades, and a comms array. She slid it into her armor and listened in on the enemy. She discovered that they were collecting the captives they’d taken during the first surge of their landing, before the local garrison had responded. They’d taken most of the colony while she’d still been digging her armor and weapons out of storage on the shuttle she’d ridden in on and praising the Alliance’s cheapness in combining her shore leave with a reassignment, so her gear was nearby, if in a code-locked box for which she’d lacked the code. The lock was strong, but she was able to break the box itself with a sufficient application of muscle and biotics. Then with her gear she’d fought her way across the colony, gathering survivors and teaching criminals who thought themselves assault troops what vanguards, true assault troops, could do. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to cross the four miles between the port and the barricade, but she’d saved many lives. And killed many Batarians, and other raiders. And now there were more pirates to kill.

Three clicks came in over the radio and she swore silently. The plan to pick off the raiders slowly was no longer feasible. The knife vanished. She grabbed the Batarian’s shotgun. It was shit, but at least she could fire it at close range without blowing herself up. The sound of destruction brought her towards the next floor and she paused by the still guarded entrance, setting the grenades to trigger on movement. Then, taking the stairs two at a time she raced as silently as sixty kilos of woman and fifteen kilos of gear could, which wasn’t very. The first Batarian had stuck his head out to see who was coming and shrieked as his shields took the blast that would have shredded his face. The assault rifle came over his shoulder in a smooth motion that was disrupted by her shoulder rush, sending the man staggering back. A trio of shots broke shields and skull alike. His fellow got off a burst that rapidly drained her shields, but he was not expecting a **charge** from a Human and the shotgun had a sturdy enough base to dent his skull, though even with her gene mods it took another two blows before he stopped moving and screaming.

The next figure rushing through was Human, probably, she was either Human, or Asari, the hard-suit helmet made it hard to tell. Either way she wasn’t friendly given that she screamed and opened up with the sub-machine gun. The inaccurate weapon was useful against civilians, but without a lot more skill than the pirate was displaying, it was no threat to Shepard. Nevertheless, she rolled behind a heavy metal table which had been upset during their looting and let her shields recharge. A helmet meant she couldn’t see if the woman had had a control chip implanted. Was she slave, or ally?

Two clicks came over the radio. There was no time to find an answer to that question. When her shields hit full again, she popped out and gunned the woman down. The blood was the red of Humans and Batarians, not the purple of Asari. It made little difference to her. The distinction which mattered was between Batarians and the rest of the galaxy. The distinctions amongst the rest of the galaxy didn’t matter.

Shepard grabbed a pair of grenades from the woman’s body as she heard one of the Batarians announcing that they’d found the enemy and would keep her penned up until the others could join them. A moment later an explosion came from below as the guards triggered her trap. The shockwave dislodged the pair of Batarians waiting to ambush her as she exited the room. One was actually on the ground, though he’d held onto his weapon and was covering the door like a proper soldier. The other, larger one had kept his feet, but turned around to face the sound of the explosion.

Shepard cleared the room and used the one facing the wrong way as a shield from his comrade, dropping the shotgun and firing a single high-explosive round into the prone Batarian. Bone and armor shrapnel impacted her living shield, who screamed and spun, throwing a wild haymaker that she ducked and backed away from. He bull-rushed her, having triggered an **adrenaline rush** to keep himself functional through the pain. There was no time to get the knife and her pistol was still overheated, so she used the only weapon she had. A swift lunge planted the white-hot barrel of the pistol against the Batarian’s exposed face. It slid through skin and bone alike, melting them. The **adrenaline rush** and the Batarian died at the same time. For a moment Shepard stared at the damage she had wrought. Her only thought was to be impressed by the design of a weapon that let the barrel by hot enough to melt bone, but left the handle cool enough to hold comfortably, of course, the heat sink was in the middle there.

She went out a second story window, hanging and dropping easily and moved back towards where she’d left the marines. Nothing got in her way, except for debris and body parts. Shrpard arrived just in time to watch the explosions from the mines her troops had left behind after being forced to withdraw. Of the squad that had breached the first firebase, only a vanguard survived, **charging** out of the way while his shields held. The squad approaching the other abandoned firebase stopped, withdrew and consolidated in a tight group. A third squad had been hanging back behind a heavy cargo crate to cover the other two squads as they advanced.

Shepard **charged** into the back of the third squad. Her sudden arrival did little more than surprise them as their shields were still active. She ducked around the edge of the cargo container and **charged** into the second squad. The pursuing third squad rounded the corner and didn’t notice the grenade she’d dropped until it went off, shattering shields. The second grenade dropped from fingers going dangerously numb the moment it was primed and she **charged** back into the third squad. Their shields destroyed by the grenade, her sudden arrival sent them flying. Two of the five were clearly dead and the remainder were stunned. The second squad tried to scatter, but the grenade she’d dropped had been on a one second fuse. Only her **charge** had let her get clear. The Kessler rose and spat its single shot before beeping plaintively at her as the heat sink tried desperately to vent the heat of turning a miniscule fragment of metal into a miniature grenade. Most of the second squad went down. The vanguard who’d so narrowly escaped the fate of the rest of his squad finally turned his attention on Shepard. She dropped her useless pistol and her hand moved even as the blue energy flared around his body to propel himself towards her at speeds faster than any eye could see.

Her knife cleared its sheath and was braced against her breastplate just in time. It skittered up along the curve of the vanguard’s body armor and carved a ragged line across his cheek and eye socket, but it didn’t hit the eye itself. The force of his **charge** drove its handle back into her armor hard enough to knock her backwards. His shotgun tried to line up a shot, and Shepard tried to kick it away. She would never know if she’d have made the kick because the marines had advanced and all of them were firing on the vanguard’s back. His shields were shredded in an instant and his body armor was so perforated it could have done double duty as a colander.

The marines moved up quickly, putting short, controlled bursts into each of the downed Batarians. The corporal approached her as she lay still for just a moment, trying to breathe despite what the sudden impacts had done to her ribs. She’d gained a new appreciation for the people who tried to stop her.

She sheathed the blade slowly. Her fingers didn’t want to release the wood of the handle. It might have been biotic shock from using her abilities too frequently, or it might have been regular shock. Either way it took her three tries to get the blade back into its sheath. The corporal extended a hand to her and pulled her to her feet with a grunt. Shepard was not a small woman, even without her armor and gear. One of the other soldiers retrieved her pistol and offered it to her almost reverentially. “Back into cover boys and girls,” the corporal snapped and they stopped gawking and moved back. “Bloody hell, sir, that was fucking amazing,” he said, a trace of a British accent coming through his helmet’s speakers.

Shepard grinned. “Got any rations?” she asked.

He froze for a moment than remembered some of the things folks said about biotics. They didn’t actually kill people when they got hungry, they just got cranky like most folks, it just happened more frequently since biotics needed a lot more food to counterbalance the increased energy expenditure of lifting people through the air with their mind, or hurtling towards the enemy at the speed of thought, depending on their skills. The usual MRE* had enough calories to keep a soldier operating for a day. It was slower to eat than the biotic rations, but it was better than nothing. She carried it over to a covered position and cracked her helmet.

_*Meal Ready to Eat_

The marine didn’t comment on her appearance, probably because he was too busy being impressed by her ability to inhale the food, seemingly without chewing. Not that MREs were worth lingering over. “We’re falling back to the next position, but we’re out of explosives.”

“You got an engineer or a tech? Anyone with explosives experience?”

“Yes, sir, but we don’t have any explo—“

“Take their grenades. Booby trap two of the bodies, then use the rest to fortify your next fall back position. Not the one you’re going to now, but the next one. Let them think you’re out of explosives and we’ll catch ‘em with their hard-suits down again.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“I assume whatever you used over there can’t be re-used?”

“No, sir, we set the anti-tamper circuit.”

“Got a remote detonator?”

No, sir,” the marine admitted, embarrassment tinging his voice.

Shepard frowned as she swallowed the energy drink that came with the MRE.

“No excuse, sir.”

She shrugged. “After they start to hit the position you’re going to now, radio on our previous channel as if you’ve got support coming into the previous firebase. With any luck, they’re listening and we can divert them.”

“Sir, aren’t you coming with us now?” She could hear the desperation in his voice, despite the distortion the helmet added to his voice.

Shepard sighed and licked the inside the MRE’s casing, then tossed it into a nearby public trash can, which promptly thanked her for not littering. The sheer incongruity of that made both marines stare at it for a moment before shaking off the second of normalcy to return to the situation they were dealing with. The helmet rose and slid over her face, leaving a featureless, pitiless stretch of black and grey armored plate, caked with the blood of her enemies and the dust of Elysium.

“Wish I could corporal, but they’re loading their first set of prisoners up at the port. The fleet’s coming. All we have to do is keep them from getting our people off this planet and they lose.

“And you’re going to do that alone?” He asked. Her glare could be felt even though he couldn’t see her eyes. “Sir,” he added.

She unbent slightly. “We have two objectives, Corporal. I’m a vanguard, trained for assault operations. It only makes sense for me to take the objective that includes assaulting an enemy position.”

“With all due respect, sir, we have one objective, protect the colonists. The ships they brought couldn’t carry more than fifty thousand people even if you loaded them so heavily everyone would suffocate before making it to the relay. There’s nearly a million people back there,” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the town center, square and original colony ship which the population of the city had retreated to when the Batarians had dropped out of the sky.

“Corporal, I’ll make you a deal. I’m not going to give you the speech about every life being important if you don’t give me the speech about the importance of looking at the big picture, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” she could hear the smile in his face, but she could see the resentment in his body language, even through the armor.

“Corporal?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ve seen what the Batarians do to their prisoners. To their slaves. I will not permit them to take any of my people.” Her voice was low and menacing, hand resting just above the seam in her armor that concealed her blade. It wasn’t intended as a threat. That blade had never tasted the blood of anyone except Batarians, nor would it. It was just a nervous tic. If the corporal didn’t see sense, she’d just go about her mission and leave him to carry out his. There was no way he was stupid enough to try to force her to do things his way.

The corporal just saluted. “Yes, sir.”

“Good man.” He turned away. “Oh and corporal,” he turned back.

“Yes, sir?”

“You and yours are my people too.”

His body language relaxed slightly into something more respectful and more confident at the reminder of what they were. Soldiers. “Thank you, sir.” He retreated and Shepard moved out. Her energy was nearly depleted, she had no explosives and now she was going to launch a one-woman attack on an unknown number of slavers, with an equally unknown number of hostages.

Well, at least it wasn’t raining.

* * *

## 2176 CE Nasurn

Maelon Heplorn was drunk. He was not, however, drunk enough. He knew this, because he was still vertical. Admittedly, the help of a stool and a bar was needed to keep him so, but he wouldn’t be drunk enough until he needed the help of the floor to remain horizontal. The bar was empty, except for him and the serving robot. It had tried to stop serving him, once, but though his technical skills would never match his medical ones, he’d learned much from Mordin.

His lip curled at that thought. Indeed, he had learned everything from Mordin. Everything except what truly mattered. The deaths on Tuchanka, everything on Tuchanka would haunt him for the rest of his life, as well it should. Let others drink to forget, Maelon did not deserve to forget.

A sound came from behind him, a sharp cough. His senses were so doused in alcohol, he didn’t hear it, or feel the hand on his shoulder, pulling him around. Vision swimming, he made out three figures, a robed and shrouded central one and a pair of guards. For a moment, heart pounding, he believed that the STG had come to kill him at last. After Tuchanka, he’d been loud about his disagreement with their actions. The killers in the STG—he stopped, there were only killers in the STG.

The military members of their team had wanted to silence him. They hadn’t said as much of course, but though he was naïve, he wasn’t stupid, he knew what those looks meant and he knew that if Kirrahe had been less impressed with Mordin, or Mordin less loyal to his student, then he would never have made it off the Veshok-16 alive.

And now they had come for him…

Sense swam in the liquor pickling his brain, stopping the hand that sought to activate the combat protocols of his omni-tool. If they were STG and wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have bothered turning him to face them. Maelon would simply have dropped dead, or disappeared, depending on their goals. His eyes focused, as, without the constant intake of alcohol, his Salarian metabolism would burn through the alcohol far too quickly.

The definitely weren’t STG, lacking the cold certainty of those professionals, but the guards were at least military grade. It was the figure in the middle that was most interesting. He recognized her. “Dalatrass Heplorn,” he whispered and tried to rise and greet his grandmother.

Tripping over his own feet was embarrassing, but the guards caught him and dragged him to stand before her like a naughty schoolboy. That was also embarrassing. Unlike his brothers, he had never been brought before their mother for misbehaving. Indeed, his life had been one long string of successes, educational and theoretical, culminating in being recognized by the great Mordin Solus and taken on as his protégé and then brought into a mission for the STG. Of course, his family didn’t _know_ about that, but every family had some connections to the Special Task Groups and when those most respected of males had started treating him as an equal, if a junior equal, everyone else had known. But that was gone now, and it was not his mother standing before him, but his grandmother, the Dalatrass Heplorn, ruler of the entire planet.

In some ways that was easier, he had imprinted on his mother, the worst the Dalatrass could do was torture him to death, his mother could have been _disappointed_ in him.

The alcohol had not slowed his tongue, as it had his brain, nor rendered it clumsy as it had his body. “What do you want, Dalatrass?”

“ _You_ are Maelon Heplorn?” she asked, doubt clear in her modulated, politician’s voice.

“Yes.”

“The student of Mordin Solus?”

“Yes.”

“Modifier of the genophage?”

 _Yes_. He didn’t answer that question aloud, letting his head fall to his chest. Guilty though he was, he didn’t have to confess. In fact, he’d sworn not to. The silence stretched uncomfortably. The Dalatrass stepped forward and the guards moved, turning their supporting hands into pinning grips which would keep him from moving, or attacking. He considered trying some of the things he’d learned from the STG boys, but even sober, that wouldn’t have worked. The guards may have lacked STG polish, but they were tough enough for this.

The Dalatrass lifted his chin in a surprisingly strong hand and he met her eyes. She was _old_. It wouldn’t be long before this turn of the wheel of lives ended for her. To his surprise, she smiled. “Good lad, you know how to keep your mouth shut.”

“Y—“ Maelon grinned and shut his mouth with a snap of teeth and a smirk.

“I should not be surprised you are clever. The building is surrounded and all communications and bugs are jammed. You are an expert in Krogan genetics and the genophage.”

“I am a geneticist,” Maelon answered simply, but he nodded slightly.

“Good. I want you to work for me.”

“Doing what?”

“Helping our people gain their rightful place in the galaxy.”

Maelon’s eyes narrowed. Whatever he’d been expecting, and he honestly wasn’t sure what it was, it wasn’t that. “What?”

“Didn’t it ever strike you as unfair, that we, the smartest species also have the shortest lives?” the Dalatrass asked.

“I didn’t bother to think about it much.” Which was true, old age wasn’t really a concern when you were busy drinking yourself to death.

“So it doesn’t bother you that the arrogant Asari get a thousand years?”

Maelon considered a thousand years to endure the pain his actions had brought upon himself and shrugged.

“That the beastly Krogan get as long as they can keep from murdering one another?”

Maelon flinched at the mention of the Krogan. The Dalatrass misinterpreted the flinch and smiled, “Even these silly humans get to live four times as long as our geniuses. It’s ridiculous. A joke. One I want you to fix.”

“If it could be done, it would have been done.”

“Oh, it was.”

Maelon’s eyes focused, interest and intellect burning off alcohol. “WHAT?”

“Where did you think the Lystheni came from? The first experiments attempted to mimic the Asari longevity. Unfortunately, that’s all tied into their biotics and their ridiculous reproductive structure. We could not reliably copy it. Instead only a few in each clutch would inherit either biotics, or their absurd method of reproduction, less than one in a thousand would get both permitting the longevity to activate as well. And even then, they had to be female to pass it down,” the Dalatrass preened, “and we all know how uncommon that is.”

Maelon nodded.

“Worse still, it limited their reproduction to only a handful of children over their lives, with no guarantee it would breed true. No, no, it was too unreliable and too destabilizing as jealousy and hatred tore clutches apart. Not that the Lystheni would listen. And that’s without getting into the political problems we had when the Asari discovered what we’d been doing and the Asari subjects who’d been necessary to do it. Only exiling the Lystheni and blaming them for everything brought an end to it. Whereas capturing Krogan will just be doing the galaxy a favor.”

“But the Krogan have no such limitations on their immortality, or reproduction” Maelon noted, drawn into the story despite himself. “Indeed, they reproduce much like we do, even if they do attach more emotional resonance to the act…”

The Dalatrass shuddered delicately at the comparison of her own people to the thuggish, murderous Krogan. “When they can reproduce at all, which is why I’ve come to you. I have no intention of trading a short life for infertility.”

“You want me to figure out how to copy the Krogan’s ability to regenerate, without also copying the genophage…”

“Precisely. Can you do it?”

Maelon carefully hid the joy behind doubt. “Maybe. I can certainly try.”

“Goo—“

“But I’ll have to begin with the genophage. You may not be willing to exchange infertility for immortality, but I doubt that many of your fellows can say the same. I will _not_ be responsible for the collapse of the Salarian Union.” _As I am for Tuchanka’s continued failure._

“Agreed.” She’d agreed too easily. It wouldn’t occur to him for almost a month that she could hire other geneticists to handle the other side of the problem. Maelon was only irreplaceable on the question of the genophage, given how tightly information on that topic was controlled.

The Dalatrass turned her attention to the guards. “Take him to the ship, get him sobered up and anything he needs. Your subjects have already been collected. A dozen healthy male and female Krogan.”

He winced at the mention of female Krogan, remembering their corpses littering the ground after the disastrous mission on Tuchanka. She mistook his wince once again and she patted his shoulder in a deliberately motherly fashion. “Do not be concerned. They will be restrained and my guards are more than capable of handling the brutes. Just focus on your work.”

He nodded. His grandmother turned and walked away, he spoke when she’d reached the door. “I assume the Krogan are expendable?”

“Of course,” she said without even bothering to turn around. The door opened at her touch and two replacement guards appeared as if they’d dropped out of **cloak** , flanking her and escorting her away.

“Of course,” Maelon agreed, his whisper low and full of hatred as the guards dragged him away. If they believed that the hatred was directed at the Krogan rather than the Dalatrass, well, that was their error.

* * *

## 2176 CE, _Transport Vessel 1711_ , Batalla System

The transport vessel was a blocky ship, with the engines, crew quarters and bridge in a module at the front. Four lengthy cargo arms trailed behind the ship like limbs on an Elcor. Large cargo pods were locked onto each of the cargo arms. The ship was still more than an hour out from the relay, in perfect position for the ambush which was currently occurring.

 ***With great concern*** “The pirates are ordering us to halt,” Colti said ponderously, the Elcor captain of the massive mineral transport which would carry the minerals extracted from the surface of the Elcor colony of Thunawanuro to the Von Industries facilities on Daleon, was very, very unhappy to be involved in Spectre business, as his translator had made clear when the operation was first proposed.

Nihlus kept his irritation under control. “Then do so,” he turned on his heel and marched away.

 ***Hopefully*** “Everything will be all right?” Colti’s eyes flickered, muscles tensing in the pre-arranged pattern to have the V.I. stop the ship.

“We’ll see,” Nihlus said. The Elcor wasn’t one of those who had hacked his translator to permit him to prevent it from announcing his mood to everyone he spoke to, and the Spectre had only ever met one Elcor who could control his pheromones enough to trick his translator regarding what he was feeling. The pheromones were honest. Like the Elcor themselves. Almost always. As a Spectre, he naturally dealt with the exceptions more often than most. Better to scare the captain so that when he communicated with the pirates, he would be scared, then to provide him reassurance which might concern them enough to blow the ship out of the sky, rather than board it.

 ***Indignantly*** “The Elders of the Courts of Dekuuna were promised—“

“That these pirates would be dealt with. And they will,” Nihlus left the ship’s bridge. He did not mutter to himself. There was no need for anyone else to know how irritated he was to be used as proof of the Council’s commitment to the Volus and the Elcor by dealing with a cluster of pirates which any of the mercenary companies of the area could have dealt with as efficiently. More so, in fact, as they wouldn’t have been prevented from bringing in a few heavily armed ships to level the playing field. If he’d been allowed to handle this quietly he could have brought in a frigate flotilla, probably the 79th, and wiped the pirates out without anyone else even knowing he’d been involved. But this had to be seen to be the action of a Spectre, without the provocation of sending Citadel military vessels into the Terminus systems. He despised politics.

Most of his troops were hidden in amongst the mineral containers, which should prevent any detection of their presence. He’d requested a few Elcor troops who would ensure that the pirates wouldn’t penetrate into the crew quarters and work areas of the ship. He’d seen what Elcor troops could do in a confined space. They were kitted out with kinetic barriers that any other species would have put on a tank and were wearing heavy weapons capable of tearing through a Turian’s shields in seconds.

Nihlus let his mandible’s stretch open slightly. At least this job would have one upside, for the pirates here were a Turian gang. He despised Turians who preyed on others. Born outside the Hierarchy and outside Council space, his family had not descended to such savagery. Those who chose to do so would receive no mercy from him, or from any of the soldiers of the 26th Armiger Legion he’d borrowed for this operation. Usually he preferred to work alone, but not when his hands were tied and he was forced to operate publically.

The pirate ship approached an open slot on one of the cargo arms. Previous raids by other groups had followed a set pattern of arriving, demanding the payment of a ‘tax’ and accepting one of the cargo pods attached to the long, spindly arms of the cargo ship in exchange for permitting them to go on their way unmolested. The expense had been less than bringing in mercenaries to clean out the pirates, so neither the Volus, nor the Elcor had done anything, until this new group calling itself the Ravagers had seen what a profit their rivals were making off the system and moved in. They didn’t bother with pretense, merely docking and stealing the entire ship. Several attempts had been made to ransom the crews, but after the Blue Suns botched an attempt to snatch the prisoners rather than pay the ransom, the crews had simply been shot, then dumped out an airlock, as there was no market for Elcor slaves. With materials cut-off, Von Industries was furious, as were the various Elcor mining concerns which had lost people and ships.

Which was why a Spectre had been sent. To make an example of the Terminus rabble and prove the Council cared about the non-Council races, try to quiet them down, especially with the Humans making trouble and alliances among the other non-Council species. He sighed slightly, he wished the Humans would make up their mind as to a strategy to gain acceptance. Courting everyone, except the Batarians, made them look desperate, but it also meant that the Council had to be courting everyone as well. The last six months had consisted of running around, trying to convince people how much the Council cared about them. That wasn’t why he’d become a Spectre. They should have sent an Asari for that. At least this mission would have some shooting in it.

He slid past a massive Elcor soldier whose harness bristled with machine-guns. It was Hatter, the sergeant in charge of the team. ***Eager for battle*** “These murderers won’t know what hit them.”

Nihlus smirked. “Oh, no, I’m sure they’ll know that it was you who hit them, Sergeant, you make an impression in that outfit.”

 ***Boisterously*** “That’s what the boys always say, when they see me coming on shore leave.”

The Turian Spectre laughed, and tried very hard not to think about what exactly an Elcor’s sex life might be like.

Nihlus made it into position as the ship lurched slightly when the pirate frigate locked onto the cargo ship. There were no indications as the pirates forced the airlock that his troops were moving across the void towards the enemy ship, hidden from view by advanced ECM, they maintained complete radio silence. The engineers—no, the 26th called them saboteurs—would open the pirate ship’s other airlock and deal with the crew, the Elcor soldiers would keep the cargo ship’s crew safe. It was his job to prevent the pirates from getting away, or firing on the cargo ship from the time they realized it was a trap until they were all dead. Which was why he was hiding behind a false panel by the airlock, watching a dozen Turian bordering party storm aboard.

He resisted the urge to drop a grenade at the back of their ragged formation. This was embarrassing, these fools were Turians? He hadn’t known the galaxy made any of his people so sloppy.

Still, they did have enough sense to leave a pair of guards on the airlock. They didn’t even have the sense to spread out, standing close together so they could talk about what they were going to do when they got back to Omega. Nihlus stepped out from behind them, pulling a pair of pistols off his hard-suit and, ensuring the muzzle was inside their shield, he cut off their pornographic description of their interest in some Asari dancer with two quick blasts. Holstering one of the pistols, he moved quickly through their ship. It was a standard design, with the bridge in the center of the ship, where it would take a crippling blow to damage it. But with a frigate, the center of the ship wasn’t far away.

A skilled infiltrator, he made it through the enemy lines without any particular trouble, only have to use his **cloak** once to evade the notice of a particular dedicated engineer. It was almost a shame to shoot her in the back of head before continuing on, but he really didn’t want to be hit from behind when he stormed the bridge.

Use of the tactical **cloak** let him slip onto the bridge without anyone noticing. A V.I. streamed footage from a security camera right outside where Sergeant Hatter and his troops were waiting at a choke-point. The Turians might be a disgrace to their species, but they knew enough to breach the choke-point between the cargo arms and the crew compartment as a group. It wouldn’t be long now.

Nihlus glanced around the bridge. There were only three Turians there, one at the piloting console, a second at the weapons/scanning controls and the third, a woman, who was wearing elaborate armor, unlike her fellows who were wearing simple clothing, was at the comms console, giving orders to the boarding party. She had to be the pirate captain. They were all facing their consoles, so he had an opportunity. The combat knife dropped from its sheath into his hand. A hand grabbed the pilot’s head fringe, jerked it up and to the side, exposing the Turian’s unarmored jawline. The blade bit up, killing the pilot instantly. Unfortunately the blade caught and scraped loudly on the dead Turian’s spine, drawing the curious attention of the Turian at the weapons console.

The sound of heavy weapons firing on full power filled the room through the comms console as the pirates ran straight into the vengeful fire of the Elcor heavies. The weapons officer saw him before he could reactivate his **cloak**. The pirate opened his mouth to scream and Nihlus rushed him leaving his knife in the dead pilot. The Turian managed to get out a squeaked warning before the heavily armored Spectre hit the cloth-wearing pirate like a tank, slamming him back into the console, his head sliding through the holographic controls and bouncing off the metal of the bulkhead underneath. Nihlus could feel the pirate’s chest plate crumple under the impact of his armored shoulder and he used the rebound to spin himself to face the pirate captain, pistol coming up.

There was just time to see the blue glow swirling around her extended hand, think _cabal_ and silently curse the lack of prep time and intel on this operation before the **warp** hit him full in the chest, eating away at his shield. He sprinted towards cover, firing as he went. Only a third of his shots hit her shield, a horrifying hit-rate for a Turian, even one sprinting and firing one handed. Especially when the target wasn’t moving, but was rather gathering biotic energy. The **throw** that headed towards him detonated the warp that was crawling all over his shield.

The explosion sent him into the wall and left him stunned for a moment. Though his armor was holding, his shields were down. The Turian biotic reached out a hand, **pulling** him off his feet and dangling helplessly in the air. She pulled a heavy pistol off her armor and lined up a shot, only to be distracted by the sound of explosions as the Armiger Legion troops encountered the pirates and began to rip through them. 

Nihlus triggered his **cloak** the moment she looked away. When she looked back, he’d disappeared. She spun, searching for the Spectre as he floated over her. The biotics failed before his tactical **cloak** ran out of power. Though he’d had zero-gee training and practiced with more than one biotic in the past, he wasn’t able to land on his feet, instead he hit the deck hard, pistol jarred out of his hand. As he scrambled up onto all fours, she aimed her gun in the general direction of the sound and fired. He charged forward, get a hand around the wrist of her gun hand, forcing it up. The **cloak** failed as he brought an armored knee up against her equally armored stomach. The impact didn’t do much damage, but it made her hunch over, he twisted her wrist high, forcing her to bend over further and he brought his knee up against her helmeted head. It was her turn to be stunned and he took advantage, forcing her face-down into the deck, arm elevated, his knee in the center of her back, leaving her helpless and pinned. The second pistol found its way into his hand and then against the base of her helmet, “It’s time to have a little conversation, pirate,” he whispered, right into the audio sensor on her armor, voice vibrating with menace clearly audible even through his helmet.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? My troops will—“

“Decompose. As for me, I am a Spectre of the Council.”

A shudder went through the form of the pirate pinned beneath him. “Spirits…” She shuddered again.

Nihlus waited for her to begin to find her balance again, then knocked her off balance again, “Now, you can tell me about your little buddies, or I can bring in my Asari interrogator and she can rip the information from your mind, while my engineers are ripping the information from your computers.” This was a lie, both because he did not have an Asari interrogator and because their melding didn’t work that way. Some information could sometimes be gained, depending on the interrogator and the victim, but since there was no way to verify it and it required you to trust a rapist, Nihlus didn’t use them, unlike some Spectres, exempt from the laws which usually would have barred such action. 

“If I tell you will you let me go?” her voice vibrated with terror, believing his bluff.

“No, but I’ll turn you over to the Courts of Dekuuna. They’ll keep you in a comfortable cell, while they deliberate over your case for the next decade, and they don’t have the death penalty.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Nihlus’s mandibles flexed in victory as the pirate began to spill her guts, just as the Turian Legionnaires entered the room. It was twenty minutes before she was drained and he had them drag her from the room, using full biotic control measures.

He rose to his feet and staggered slightly, feeling the familiar pain of a gunshot wound. Looking down he saw a hole in the armor plate over his stomach, leaking blood. “Well, shit,” he said leaning on the wall and activating his medigel dispenser, injecting the newly modified dextro-medigel into the wound, stopping the bleeding and the pain alike. Humans had their good points and the investment of his own funds into the Sirta Foundation’s effort to reengineer medigel to work on dextro physiology had paid off once again in a manner more than the merely monetary.

The lieutenant commanding his detachment of troops leapt forward to support him. “Sir, are you all right?”

“I’m well enough. Check the data we got from the pirate against whatever your engineers have pulled from their computer core.” He could sense her preparing to speak and got there first. “I’ll head down to the med bay and get checked out,” Nihlus pulled away and walked easily towards the door.

“Thank you sir. Axen, Vappal, escort the Spectre to the med bay and make sure he’s all right.” His helmeted head turned back towards her like a turret tracking an enemy. “Sir, the ship isn’t entirely secure yet.”

“Very well,” Nihlus agreed, accepting the help as he marched off, with the Legionnaires hovering around him. Being babied always made him crazy, but it probably wasn’t avoidable at the moment, not if he wanted to be ready for action by the time they reached the pirate base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Liberator rushes to join a war it knows nothing about. Again. 
> 
> Servalan kills a lot of people. Also again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply. Reviews and comments are welcome.

## 253.14 NC – The _Liberator_ , Delarius System

“Neutron blasters recharging, ten seconds to full power,” Cally noted calmly.

Jenna responded by angling the _Liberator_ to be in position to fire on the Federation Battleship that commanded the blockade group interfering with their attempt to contact the rebels on Delarius 12. The ship shuddered as enemy fire impacted the force-wall.

“Force-wall holding!” Vila screeched.

Avon sneered to himself, if it hadn’t held the ship wouldn’t have shuddered, it would have knocked him from his perch, leaning on the communications console as he sought to convince the blockade group that the _Liberator_ was, in fact, moving in a completely different direction than reality portrayed. Their electronic warfare suites were sufficient to see through his deceit. Orac was useless in this sort of situation, the Federation was aware of the A.I. and had taken steps to isolate their control systems from anything capable of receiving its signal, and anything that would confuse the Federation’s computers would confuse Orac as well. He swore to himself silently as his helplessness, at his uselessness in this situation, but none of that showed in his body language. He still looked like a long, lean, calm figure, wrapped in black leather.

“Drop the force-wall…now!” Cally ordered.

The force wall vanished and the neutron flare shield leapt to life to prevent scattering of radiation from the powerful weapons from cooking them alive. The neutron blasters spat fiery death towards the lumbering Federation vessel. Which missed entirely when the heavy vessel engaged its FTL engines and fled the system, first pursued, then surpassed by its escort craft.

“What the hell was that?” Cally snapped.

“Bring us around to track them,” Blake ordered, rising from the command chair and ordering Zen to track the withdrawing ships.

“Aren’t we supposed to be heading to Delarius 12?” Vila asked.

There was a communal moment of doubt over the fact that the thief was eager to continue a dangerous mission with no possibility of plunder, before they realized that he simply didn’t want anything to do with attempting to pursue a Federation battlegroup.

“We can do that anytime, now that the blockade is gone. Finding out where a Federation battlegroup is going that is more important than fighting us is more important.”

Avon resisted the urge to roll his eyes and walked over to Orac and locked the machine’s key in place. He didn’t particularly want to know why the battlegroup had disappeared, but decided it might be more profitable than more endless talking with would-be revolutionaries, which, in his experience was boring, occasionally dangerous and entirely profitless. “Orac, why did the battlegroup which just engaged the _Liberator_ in combat, withdraw?”

“Because, it received orders to do so,” Orac said, irascibly. “Now, I’m still trying to figure out how the aliens communicated with Travis to coordinate the assault on Star One, so stop wasting my processing power on irrelevancies.”

Blake twitched irritably at the mention of their disastrous attempt to assault what they had believed to be the center of Federation military control, only to discover after penetrating the facility that not only had it been compromised by Travis’s alien allies, but the facility itself didn’t coordinate any of the Federation’s military activity, except for the absurd propaganda project of ‘mining the edge of the galaxy.’

“Provide a printout of their orders,” Avon ordered, before any of the others could snap at the overly literal computer.

The printed sheet spat out without the supposed Oracle bothering to respond orally. Avon lifted it and skimmed through it. He raised a brow and passed the sheet to Blake.

“What’s going on?” Jenna asked.

“It’s not just this battlegroup. This was a broad-beam, all fleets are being recalled. If I’m reading this right, almost half of the fleet is gathering near the Monolith, to join the supreme commander, the rest are rendezvousing at Earth and Saurian Major. All other operations are cancelled. This is signed by both Servalan and the President,” Blake said.

“Half the fleet? That’s more than a thousand ships!” Jenna said. “What could need…Oh.”

“Well, I guess we all know what happens next,” Avon said, before retrieving Orac’s key and turned to leave the flight deck.

“Wait, what happens next? Where are you going?” Vila asked.

“Ask your precious leader. I’m going to my quarters to sleep, while I can. I prefer to be at my best when dealing with Servalan.”

“What do you mean? Why would we be dealing with Servalan?”

“Because anything that would need every fleet in the galaxy will need us too,” Blake said.

“And placing ourselves within reach of the full, wait, I do apologize, it’s only _half,_ the might of the Federation is definitely not going to be fatal,” Avon noted sardonically from the doorway.

“Zen, how long would it take us to get to the rendezvous point near the Monolith, with depletion of no more than two energy banks on arrival?” Blake asked, ignoring the programmer.

“Twelve hours, forty-seven minutes, ten—“

“Thank you, Zen,” Jenna interrupted, setting the course.

“Course confirmed. Standard by five.” The engines hummed to life, swinging them about and then shoving them forward at superluminal speeds.

“If half the Federation fleet can’t win, what could we do?” Vila pointed out.

“More than if we aren’t there,” Blake said, as if that answered anything.

Vila opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the engines engaging. “I’ll follow Avon’s example this time. We should all be in top condition when we arrive,” Blake said, leaving the bridge, shaking his head slightly.

Jenna rose and fled the room, her hands shaking slightly. She’d reacted worse than either of the others, but then again, like Cally, she’d been involved in the battle against Travis’s alien allies above Star One. The men had been dirtside dealing with Travis during that horrific battle as the massive alien vessel massacred the Federation battlegroup which had been pursuing the _Liberator_. Eight thousand men, women, and mutoids dead in less than ten minutes and the _Liberator_ pounded so badly they’d barely been able to limp away and it had taken more than a month for the autorepair systems and the crew to get the ship back into working order.

They’d won, but the battle had left scars far more severe, if less visible than those Travis had given Blake before the revolutionary had managed to gun down his old enemy. The fact that he’d gotten up after having been shot three times was the first sign that the aliens had given him more than just a ride. Avon had had to overload Vila’s gun, (over Vila’s strenuous objections, but Avon certainly wasn’t going to disarm himself and Blake’s gun had been lost as they dragged the unconscious man along) bringing down an entire corridor on the enhanced traitor, in order to stop his pursuit of the retreating men. Even then, Avon had insisted they strafe the area from orbit before retreating to be sure the space-commander was truly dead.

Cally could feel the same fear at the thought of facing more of those horrifically powerful, inhumanely maneuverable, simply impossible ships. But for all that she was exiled, for all that Auronar had betrayed the vision of its founders out of fear of the Federation, she would not permit these aliens who sought nothing less than the complete destruction of humanity, in all its varieties, to set one slimy tentacle in this galaxy. She had something to fight for, not merely something to fight against. She could do this. She could.

“At least Avon and Blake are in agreement on what we should do, for once,” Vila muttered.

Cally laughed, grateful for the distraction. “You really think so?”

“He didn’t argue!” Vila pointed out.

“Because he knew that the vote would be three-to-two.” She paused and a nasty grin spread across her usually pleasant features, “Oh, I do apologize, I meant four-to-one. I forgot that you always vote with the majority.”

“Coward, not idiot,” Vila said proudly, tapping his chest. The thief had long ago learned that being on the winning side was far more important than being right. Because even when he was right, no one would ever give him any credit and he couldn’t get away with an ‘I told you so.’

“Why would he waste time on an argument he would lose, when, if he’s right, there won’t be any opportunity to say he told us so?” Cally asked, unknowingly echoing Vila’s own thoughts.

“Why wouldn’t he get to say he told us so? Avon _lives_ to say he told us so!”

Cally almost explained, but realized that she was picking on Vila to try to make herself feel better about what she feared was their imminent death. If she really had less than a day to live, then that wasn’t how she wanted to spend it. Her laughter as she left the deck was kind, and she didn’t explain. Vila might sleep better if he didn’t realize that if Avon was right, then they would all be very, very dead. The telepath headed towards Avon’s quarters. She knew how she wanted to spend her last hours.

“Aw…crap,” Vila said after a moment, his innate paranoia leading him to the right conclusion.

* * *

## 253.14 NC – Command Ship _FNS_ _Unity_ , Rendezvous Point

“Servalan! Have you lost your fucking mind? First you permit Star One to be destroyed, destabilizing Civil Administration control of a hundred worlds, and now you pull Fleet resources off suppression operations, and drag _half my fucking fleet_ into the back of beyond? Forging _my_ signature to do so? Are you trying to destroy the Federation singlehanded?” The President of the Terran Federation was a powerful speaker, for all that he maintained his power more by pacification drugs, memory replacement and disappearances than by speechifying. The command ship had the newest generation of FTL comms installed to connect it to Earth as well as a dozen major bases and twice that many other command ships. Even the massive command ship, built in a battleship’s hull could only power so many of the comm relays. She was now regretting the time and energy she’d put into having the command ships constructed. The real time FTL communication was a major strategic advantage, but the President’s newfound ability to micromanage was infuriating.

Servalan reclined on her command throne, elegant white gown swirling around her ankles, leaving one shoulder bare and completely concealing the antipersonnel weapon hidden under her covered arm. Her mutoid* guards stood rigidly at attention, their heavy weapons held precisely, eyes tracking the movement of every man and woman in the command center, but ignoring the fuming image of the High Admiral of the Galactic Fleets, most relevant of the president’s many, many titles. The crew of the command ship was less focused. Servalan despised being made to look weak in front of anyone, especially her own subordinates and would find a way to make them pay for witnessing that.

_*Mutoids are those subjected to Mutoid Cybernetic Modification, either due to being sentenced to it as punishment for some crime, or as with most of those working on secret projects, purchased from worlds where slavery was legal and rather illegally modified, so that they were not listed on either inventory manifests, or recruitment lists. Only cash had to vanish, which the Federation Secret Operations Division managed easily enough, at least with the Supreme Commander’s backing. Programmed loyalty did not falter and they were both stronger and faster than Human standard, even Alpha-Grade Human standard, yet they required only blood serum to survive. Well, blood serum and a recharge every few days._

Servalan resisted the urge to sigh. “Mr. President, we received a communication from our forces near the Monolith. They’re under attack by the same aliens who assaulted Star One. A third of the defensive minefield has already been cleared. I’d be taking more than half the fleet, but the rest won’t reach us in time. Better to hold them in reserve than throw them away piecemeal if we lose this battle.” Well, that was what her generals and admirals said, her own position was more that she wanted a reserve available to rescue her if things went wrong.

“The aliens are a _fucking propaganda stunt_ , just like that absurd ‘minefield around the galaxy’ bullshit. I’d say this was a coup, except you’re running away. So explain yourself, Commander.”

“Mr. President, I provided you with copies of the footage from Star One and from the current engagement. I can stream the footage from the current engagement if you like—“

“ENOUGH! We both know that your real skills were never military, but rather manipulation and trickery. I’ve seen you forge a man’s memories, a video file is well within your capabilities,” he took a deep breath and brough himself back under control. “Now, I’m giving you an order, return your ships to their duty posts and you will be allowed to retire honorably, with your privileges and wealth intact.”

Now Servalan did sigh, shaking her head with every appearance of sadness. Perhaps she should have let the President and the Council know that the aliens were real earlier. However the evidence had all been circumstantial. It was enough to make her and her predecessors prepare, when the consequences of failing to do so was the extinction of humanity, but it probably wouldn’t have convinced the men and women who made it to the top in the Civil Administration. Those Alpha Grade citizens who reached that apex of power were uniformly ruthless, selfish bastards, who would happily roll the dice on the disaster falling on the next generation, in exchange for strengthening their own position right now.

So they’d told the President and Council that the military build-up was to suppress revolt and expand the Federation. They told the legislature that the build-up was to oppose extra-galactic invaders. And they told the populace that their taxation and suffering was building a minefield that would protect the galaxy, but once it was complete, everyone would be living in a utopia. They’d convinced the Legislature that they needed to actually build some mines to support the propaganda value of the mine field, they’d convinced the Council and President that they needed to build some mines to deploy in the Outer Worlds to use to destroy any rebellious colonies, and they’d actually used the majority of the mines to fortify the system around the Monolith. Not as impossible a task as fortifying the entire galaxy, but it had still taken more than fifty years, even with the massive destructive range of the nuclear mines. Even that was only possible due to the long range of the mines and the small amount of space around the fortifications and the Monolith which needed protection.

The other fortifications had been expensive, but hiding them wasn’t particularly difficult. The President and Council kept their eye on the construction of fleets, not stations, as stations could not be used to launch a coup. Only the necessity of using only loyal, unquestioning, servile (if unfortunately also sterile) mutoids as crew limited the fortification of the system. The Humans (except a command staff on each station) were relegated to the nearby habitable system with massive bases intended to delay the enemy, or, if the enemy skipped over sieging the bases, then they would raid the enemy supply lines, to which end massive underground construction yards had been built. The fact that those who’d built them believed they were preparing for exactly the coup the President now feared was a bit of irony that amused Servalan, despite her concern as the enemy cleared their minefield by simply driving some of their smaller ships through it. Even the smallest took several hits before being destroyed. Only the mine’s engines had prevented them from opening a secure zone so far, and their ability to simply appear in the system without showing up on any sensors was a worrisome development.

Servalan smiled brightly, ignoring the tension in the room. “I’m sorry to hear that Mr. President. Mr. Jordan, put the President to bed.”

“Wha—“ The President’s question ended along with his life as his bodyguard blew the president’s brains out and lifted the gun slowly to his own temple, hands struggling futilely against the mental programming and his hand spasmed, despite his best, panicked efforts.

Servalan loved that moment, when someone finally realized that she was in complete control and they controlled nothing, not even their own bodies. A second shot rang out and he joined his putative master on the ground. The President of the Terran Federation, Ruler of the High Council, Lord of the Inner and Outer Worlds, High Admiral of the Galactic Fleets, Lord General of the Six Armies and Defender of the Earth was no more and Servalan had to get back to work, which is exactly what she ordered her shocked crew.

Given that she’d just had her sole superior killed by his most trusted servant, they hastened to obey, shooting her looks somewhere between awe and terror. The president had thought he was being clever, recruiting his personal guard from amongst the Terra Nostra,* but both Servalan and her predecessor had known that and ensured that the enforcers sent for ‘training’ at the School of the Stars** all received ‘loyalty’ treatments.

_*The Terra Nostra are the largest criminal syndicate in the galaxy and, for the most part, completely unaware that they’re under the command of the President of the Federation._

_**The School of the Stars provides training to Federation satrapies and dependencies, in military combat, interrogation and counter-insurgency tactics, as well as…other services._

She sent a quick message to General Samor, commanding the fleet gathering at Earth, telling the old warhorse to handle matters as he saw fit. She wouldn’t have time to deal with the politics. She’d barely finished that task when a message came in from Admiral Parel, commanding the forces surrounding the Monolith. “Supreme Commander, they’ve cleared a hole in the mines and established a foothold in the system. They’re already begun mine clearing operations. Their weapons out-range the mines’. I’m pulling the remaining mines back to shield my stations from any attempt to close the range.”

“We’ll be in position to support you within the hour, General. Hold on.” An hour would mean that they were departing before all their forces had arrived, but she had enough ships, and would have more reinforcements inbound, unlike these alien monstrosities, whose numbers had to be limited as they attempted to launch an invasion from outside the galaxy.

For a second her mind wandered, wondering if the odd tentacled nature of the ships indicated anything about their inhabitants and creators. Probably not, after all, Human ships were blocky things, bristling weapon ports, nothing at all like Humans. She paused, thinking of the late, unlamented, Space-Commander Travis and amended the thought to ‘nothing like _most_ Humans.’ Still, those in the know had already taken up calling the aliens Squids.

Admiral Parel stiffened as if she’d insulted his mother. “This is the most heavily fortified station in the Federation, Supreme Commander, we’ll hold the line.”

“Good.” She waved a hand and the communications officer cut the connection. She rose and swayed out of the command room, guards at her back. The guards on her office door opened it when they saw her coming and searched the room before she entered. She sat down at her desk, a figure draped in white, in a brilliant white room, everything pure and clean and ordered. She breathed deeply for a full minute, then called up the data and summoned her staff. A dozen psychostrategists,* admirals and generals.

_*Psychostrategists are experts in predicting Human behavior, based on complete information, they could provide a completely accurate prediction. Unfortunately, the information regarding the aliens was incomplete, but Servalan still sought their advice and assistance._

The staff filed in and she activated the display that filled the main table. The display showed the Monolith system. The massive, phallic object, invulnerable and unopenable, hanging in space near the oddly shaped circular relic, like the ones scattered throughout space, curiosities studied by the eccentric, launchers of a thousand theories, but no technologies or profit had ever come from them and so they came to be ignored. They’d used the Monolith and the relic as bases for the first stations, but others had been built away from them, for fear that the undeniably alien artifacts had something to do with their feared, posited alien adversaries.

The enemy had indeed appeared near the Monolith, near the original station, its massive, heavily shielded bulk clinging to the artifact like coral. The enemy was rapidly deploying towards both artifacts, more ships simply appearing on their scanners every moment. A hundred of the larger vessels were already in the system, coasting towards the stations at impossible speeds, ignoring the fragments of their smaller kin, destroyed by the hundreds to clear the space they occupied so arrogantly. Both of the two immobile bases were surrounded by several thousand mines, each capable of producing a ravening blast of energy which could smash a battleship.

A delicate touch brought up display behind her, showing their own fleet movements. The last battlegroups were approaching at top speed. They’d need to refuel before moving on to battle.

“Analysis,” she ordered coldly.

Admiral Lana, one of General Samor’s old compatriots was the senior member of her staff. “The situation is bad, but not desperate. We’ll have the largest fleet ever assembled, more than a thousand ships, including a full three hundred capital ships. We’ll suffer some casualties, but so long as we focus a battlegroup’s worth of fire on each ship, until it’s destroyed, we should be effective. With the support of the stations, the fleet can win this. My main concern is electronic warfare of the type we saw in their assault on Star One. We’ve adopted the same techniques we used against the _Liberator_ ’s A.I. I propose to also transmit full orders of battle and targets to each group before we enter the system and require all commanders to memorize their orders, so even if they have some unforeseen capability we should be able to be properly coordinated.”

“And the stations?”

“We should use them as shields. I propose to issue orders to have each battlegroup fall back behind a station’s shields if its capital ships are in danger.”

“The stations won’t be there by the time we arrive. Not the two biggest ones at least,” Psychostrategist Pel Nort interjected. Servalan glanced at the youngest man in the room. He was one of her favorites, and not just because he was an awfully pretty young man. She’d entertained herself with him occasionally, but he was on her staff, not merely in her bed, because he was a top psychostrategist. At the moment he was desperate to prove himself. He’d radically misestimated Travis, and advised her most uselessly regarding the traitor’s actions at Star One.

The failure wasn’t his fault, they had had no warning of the alien’s ability to brainwash people without drugs, surgery, or anything that was in any way detectible (her own subversion of the President’s guard had also required the subversion, through money, rather than brainwashing, of the doctors who’d checked the man). No scapegoat was needed, as the President did not know of either Travis’s or Blake’s involvement. When he hadn’t believed the initial reports of the alien ship, even with its remains in hand, she’d had to change tactics and asserted that this was the initial strike of the System. Dealing with the group that had constructed, then lost the _Liberator_ was not her responsibility (as the President had discovered the existence of the System though his control of the Terra Nostra and had assigned the search for them to officers personally loyal to him, imagining Servalan did not know about it, ‘discovering’ his knowledge after the disaster had provided her enough leverage to avoid any consequences). And so the psychostrategist had survived his failure.

Though he might not survive this meeting unless he had a very good reason for taking so unpopular a position.

Lana turned steel grey eyes, which matched her cropped hair, on the young man. The younger man didn’t shrink before her stare, but was diminished by the comparison. “Their main weapons are ballistic, not energy based. They will not lose cohesion over any range. Nor are they guided weapons, so there’s no way to trick them into missing.”

“Yes. That was obvious from the engagement at Star One. You underestimate the power of the layered shielding and armor of those bases. With the fusion power plants, they’ll be able to endure a continuous barrage for an extended period, unless the enemy closes to—“ the Admiral cut herself off.

“The enemy doesn’t have to close, because their weapons are as powerful a light hour out as a light second out,” Pel pointed out. “And this,” he waved a hand as a second wave of alien ships materialized on the screen, streaming in data from the battlefield, bringing the total enemy capital ships up to almost two hundred, “is an order of magnitude more ships than we expected them to be able to bring to bear. Until the encounter at Star One, we assumed they’d have to close to within range of our own weapons to fire. Afterwards, we assumed that the mines would do most of the work and the remaining vessels would have to close to bring their secondary weapons to bear in order to punch through our defenses. Neither of those is true. The moment they sort out their battle-line so their ships aren’t blocking each other’s shots, they’ll fire a full barrage. No shielding or armor in existence will stop that.”

The admiral frowned as she ran math, multiplying the yield of the main cannon of the enemy vessel they’d already encountered by a hundred, then comparing it to the capacity of the shield generators and armor of the stations, then the woman went white. Well, whiter.

“You’re forgetting something,” Servalan pointed out quietly. All eyes snapped to the supreme commander.

“Oh?” Pel asked, somewhere between amused and terrified.

“The relics. These aliens obviously have something to do with them. Are we sure they’ll risk damaging them with such a powerful attack?”

“Nothing has damaged them before,” Pel pointed out.

“Which doesn’t mean nothing can damage them. Especially given the artifacts current…behavior,” Servalan noted.

Everyone turned their attention back to the display table and looked not at the enemy fleet, but at their two main bases and saw what Servalan had seen. The Monolith was…opening. Invisible seams turned into gaping caverns as it opened like a flower. Fortunately, the station was mostly built on one of the sections, but a section of the base was ripped away as it opened, leaving a gaping hole in the armor and a hundred crewmembers to die slowly as their powerless section of the station slowly lost life-support.

The other station was glowing blue and its midsection had begun to spin. Fortunately the base had not been built on fragile seeming strands that made up the ball at the center of the artifact, but rather all along the still-immobile top.

“You’re right, but it won’t matter,” Pel countered. “Look at their fleet deployments. They’re mustering just enough ships to deal with the secondary stations, while their main force moves in along the sides to blow the stations off the artifacts.”

“Admiral, Pel, adjust fleet tactics to take account of the fact that the enemy prefers to avoid firing directly on the targets. You,” she pointed at a staffer at random, “inform the base commanders to concentrate their shielding on the sides and move their mines in under the shielding.”

“Supreme Commander?” Pel asked, confused.

She rolled her eyes, psychostrategists, it was said, never made a mistake unless they lacked all the facts. Her own file and behavior was so full of misdirection and flat out lies that the foolish creatures were useless against her. “If the enemy wants to keep it intact, we’ll destroy it. We’ll remotely trigger the base’s and mines’ Omega protocol when they can no longer delay the enemy.”

There was a moment of silence in which none of her staff dared point out that the two stations housed almost a million Federation soldiers. Admittedly the vast majority were mutoids, but the remainder were among the Federations best and most loyal soldiers.

“You have work to do,” she noted and the staff sprang into action. Those not given specific tasks rushing off to harry underlings into preparing the fleet to advance. Two hundred capital ships was bad, but this wasn’t unwinnable. Especially not with the enemy currently dispersed throughout the system. It practically invited defeat in detail, despite the absurd speed of the enemy ships.

Minutes ticked by as the aliens maneuvered themselves into position. The enemy had started out near the Monolith, which would, she mused, need a new name after this, and were in position to fire on it first. They encircled the base and fired in unison. Her hand hovered over the button which would activate the base’s Omega protocol, overload all the reactors, weapons and mines on the base and engulf the entire thing in unrelenting nuclear fire. But the shields held. The dedicated power production of a hundred fusion generators resisted the fire of thirty of the creatures. They fired again less than eight seconds later. Even the most pessimistic of their projections had assumed a minute between shots, based on the pattern of the enemy ship at Star One. But that ship had had to line up those shots with comparatively tiny Federation vessels, not simply fire on a static target. The moment she saw flames penetrate the shield perimeter, she pushed the button.

Three quarters of a million troops died in that instant. A thousand particle cannons overloaded, four thousand three hundred and ninety two nuclear mines, each a dozen times more powerful than the ones which had pacified the rebellious colony of Minos Minor, exploded and a hundred fusion plants, each capable of powering a domed city on Earth detonated. The devastation on the interior of the Monolith was savage, but the shell was not even scratched.

Servalan’s eyes narrowed like a gambler reacting to a bad deal.

It was another five minutes before the fleet was ready to depart. She let the good admiral give the orders and watched the mightiest fleet ever assembled by the Federation race towards the enemy, herself in the center of the very heart, no, the brain of that great conglomeration of fleets. It was an intoxicating feeling of power. The others felt it too, but the danger tempered it for them. They could not feel powerful until they were safe as well.

Only Servalan of all the crew of the command ship understood that there was no safety anywhere. If the President had understood that, his brains might not have been decorating the walls of his office. Or perhaps they would, she’d arranged the deaths of a great many properly paranoid and powerful people. And now she would show the universe that it was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's bad day continues. Nihlus's normal day continues. Samara is Samara. To the sorrow of many around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply.

## 2176 CE, Elysium

The pirates were disorganized rabble. The comms unit she’d lifted must belong to the Batarian regulars who made up the core of their effective fighters. Unfortunately, their very discipline meant that they weren’t going to be packing up slaves and running off while there were still Human soldiers active. She left the captured comms unit with the troops defending the civilians and moved through the city like a ghost.

Well, she was moving through like a ghost until a drunken pirate fell out a third story window and landed a foot in front of her. After that she realized that silence was probably unnecessary, even counterproductive. Instead she rubbed some of the blood and dirt over her chest plate, covering up the N6 decal and obscuring the Alliance markings, the inverted V standing above the tiny model of the Earth was easy enough to cover. These days it was the IFF* which told soldiers who was on their side, not uniforms.

_*Identifier Friend/Foe, unique scrambled passive identifiers which tell soldiers who’s on their side and prevent friendly fire. When hacked, for no system is perfectly secure, they have led to one-sided victories, but their absence leads to heavy friendly fire casualties, so most militaries still use them, at least when engaged in official operations._

But the IFF would be of no use in this consortium of criminals, if they even had such a system, so all it would take is confidence and she could walk right through. Probably. In any event, she was almost right, she could walk right through with no more harassment than an armored and heavily armed woman could expect from a group of equally armored and armed criminals. It never actually descended to the point where she had to fire her pistol, but she had to knock down two different idiots. She chose to knock down an additional three Batarians because she wanted to.

The spaceport was packed, two gutted bulk transports had been used to drop the majority of the invaders towered over the other vessels. One stood empty, waiting for the survivors of the raiders, while the other was being packed with slaves and loot. The other half dozen ships were lightly armed pirate craft, which had come down intending to act as air support, but after the air-defense batteries gutted one of them and another had been brought down by a volley of missile fire from the militia*, they’d chosen to land at the unprotected port and loose their crew upon the city. A pirate captain could always find more recruits to replace those crewmembers they lost, but without their ship they wouldn’t make it off the planet to fence their loot and slaves.

_*Which had used up their stock of Human-portable heavy weapons, but the raiders didn’t know that._

The orbital strikes after chasing off the Navy had taken out police stations, barracks and armories, leaving the planet’s defenses crippled and its protection in the hands of the handful of survivors. There was no way to stop eight ships on her own, but if she could cripple the bulk transports, then they’d have a hard time getting any number of slaves off the planet. Smashing up engineering would probably do it. A ship was a delicate thing and the engineers who signed on with pirates were unlikely to be much good and the Batarians wouldn’t dare use their own ships or crews for this operation.

Using some of their own troops was as far as the Hegemony would go. Troops could always be disowned as deserters, or rebels, or simply off-duty Batarians with an eye on the main chance, but ships would raise serious questions and the Batarian navy didn’t have crew to spare. The army could always fill the ranks of their regulars by drafting the lower castes, or press-ganging their way through a slum, but crew needed more education and were always in short supply given the limitations on education of the lower castes and the ban on education on slaves.

The line of captives was long enough and the pile of loot was large enough that she had time to cripple the empty vessel first. There was a guard out front, but the Salarian on guard duty was clearly there because he was the new guy. He was currently engaged in a pointless argument with a Batarian (who’d obviously been part of a group which had looted a bar) over whether the Batarian had a bunk on the transport ship behind the Salarian.

“My gearsss all ontha ship. I can’t catch anything ‘thout my gear!” It was pretty impressive that Shepard’s translator didn’t have any serious problem with the slurred speech of the extremely drunk Batarian.

“You’re wearing your gear! And you couldn’t catch an eye infection!”*

_*This is a rather severe insult to a Batarian, as it is viewed as suggesting that they are like the inferior (in their view) dual eyed species who make up the majority of the galaxy’s population._

"Whaddya say froggie?”

“I said—CRUNCH” The Salarian’s response was cut off by the Batarian’s fist. Drunk or not, he was an experienced fighter. And therefore he didn’t hesitate to put the boot in on his downed opponent, leaving the Salarian curled around the big Batarian’s boot. Shepard kicked the Batarian behind the knee, knocking him to his knees and then slammed the big slaver’s head against the ship’s hull until he stopped screaming and struggling.

“Don’t argue with drunks, newb,” it took the Salarian a long minute before he took the hand she offered and was pulled effortlessly to his feet. His body armor had absorbed most of the damage, though the blow had clearly rattled his head, even through his helmet. “You aren’t going to win and even if you did, it’s hardly anything to brag about.” The pirate opened his mouth, but Shepard cut him off before he could ask who she was. “Grab a leg, unblooded* and let’s get the trash out of the airlock.”

_*Unblooded is a Turian insult, adopted by many of the pirates of the Terminus. It is a dismissive term used by the experienced soldiers to refer to new recruits. It does not, in fact refer solely to those who have not been in combat, but rather to those who are unblooded in combat with that particular unit. Usage is, however, as slipshod as with any other insult._

With Shepard leading the way, they made it twenty feet into the ship, with the Batarian’s head bouncing along the deck, before the Salarian realized he should ask why they were dragging the Batarian into the their ship instead of just out of the way. “Come on, unblooded, and leave him here for the civies to play with?”

The Salarian looked at her dubiously.

Shepard’s laughter was a cold, cruel thing. “Kidding, kid. When he wakes up, he can pay for passage, or he can be sold for passage. I know some folks that’ll pay for a big Batarian like him. More than enough to make it worth finding a corner to shove him in. Besides, don’t you want to see his face when he realizes he drank away his shot at looting a planet?”

The Salarian’s laughter was a pale reflection of Shepard’s.

“In fact,” she dropped the pirate’s leg, “want to even the score?” a waved hand at the Batarian’s bleeding face made it clear what she was suggesting.

The Salarian looked at his balled fist, then shrugged. The body-armor’s gauntlet would somewhat make up for their relative sizes and his general physical weakness. Shepard let him get in two good hits before she pulled the pistol from the small of his back, checked his turn at the feel of the weapon coming off his armor with a hand on the shoulder and shot him in the temple as he tried to turn to face her.

A quick slice of her blade across the Batarian’s throat and both pirates were dead. She held onto the Salarian’s pistol and closed the airlock before moving towards the engineering section. A total of two pirates got in her way, but Shepard had learned a long time ago that for some reason people expected you to announce that you were planning to attack them. So she just walked up to them, chatting, and then shot them each in the head when she got close enough. There were no engineers on duty which made the process of trashing the engineering deck quite easy.

Six minutes in and out. She would have been proud, if the enemy hadn’t been pathetic. The next one was going to be the hard one. It was all made much worse as she walked out of the ship, shutting the airlock behind her, and three clicks came in over the comms. Her troops had engaged the enemy. Without her. For a moment she was torn between continuing on and turning back. But one thing N training had taught her was that it was better to make a decision than to dither and she’d already made this one.

There were nine guards with the prisoners who were shuffling onto the other transport. She might be able to take them, but not without massive casualties among the unarmored and unshielded civilians. So instead, she walked around the transport, avoiding the guards on duty on the other pirate ships, who were focused on watching each other to prevent any old scores from being settled in the confusion of the raid. The second airlock she located was locked, as was the main cargo hatch. Shepard was no engineer or infiltrator, or even a sentinel. Her technical ability consisted of being able to access the extranet. Usually.

But she was N trained, which included training on starship assault. And the other access point on most ships was the life pod. If you could get there. Shepard was a vanguard. One **charge** later and she was balanced on the hull by a spherical bulge containing the escape pod. A **warp** against the center of the low grade armor plate weakened it enough for her to pry it open. She didn’t have to break into the life-pod because it had been launched some time ago and not replaced. Part of her hoped the crew had gotten away before the ship fell into pirate hands, but the universe had comprehensively trained optimism out of her.

If the ship followed the usual pattern than the life-pod would open up on the bridge, on the theory that that was where the crew would be in a crisis. Maybe the flight deck would be as empty on this ship as engineering had been on the other ship, but she doubted it since this ship was clearly being loaded to leave. Speed was the order of the day. Since installation and maintenance crews had to get in, the hatch could be opened from the outside as well. A touch to the button, an actual button, the ship was too old for holographic controls, and the hatch slid open with a shriek of unoiled and unmaintained metal. The half dozen crew members preparing the ship for takeoff all turned to stare at the absurdly loud opening. Their shock gave her a momentary advantage and the fact that they weren’t wearing armor and were barely armed gave her a permanent advantage.

The only risk was that they might warn the guards outside. A **charge** to the one nearest the comms console ended that threat as the explosion of her **charge** sent everyone else on the bridge to the ground. Shepard dispatched the pirates with a series of head shots, and one particularly brutal stomp, crushing a human’s skull. Shepard reviewed the internal security cameras, which were quite nice (internal security being a high priority for a slave transport ship). The prisoners were still being loaded in. They wouldn’t all fit, not with room for the loot and the other raiders. Two slavers were inside the ship, shoving their captives into cells improvised out of cargo containers. They weren’t armed. Weapons might have been taken from them and used on them, while their armor made it far harder for them to be mobbed to death by the unarmed. 

Shepard waited, sealing the way she’d come in and watching her people suffer as she waited for her moment to come. Two clicks came over her comms system and more captives were forced into cargo pods, some weeping, some silently despairing, and many clutching their family as they tried to pretend they’d be able to keep them from being ripped away by their new masters. The loading slowed to a trickle and the guards outside began to get more selective, separating the young and the healthy, the valuable, from the others. One old woman got abusive when a young man who looked like her grandson was pulled away and got a burst from a pirate’s assault rifle for her trouble. The pirate wasn’t a good shot, or was quite sadistic as it ripped her lower body apart, but left her alive and screaming, until one of the other slavers got annoyed and put another burst through her, silencing her. One of the other prisoners wrapped a hand around the young man’s mouth, keeping him from drawing any further attention.

Finally the ship was almost full. Even as she left the flight deck she heard another set of two clicks. The soldiers had been forced back again. A parallel corridor let her slip past the pirates inside the ship and none of the guards paid her any mind as she walked out. If she was inside the ship, then clearly she was permitted to be there. They were concerned about the prisoners and the perimeter. Shepard sauntered over to the young man coring a group of fit young people who hadn’t been brought aboard the transport because the slavers were good at picking out who might be trouble. Some of the young people had Systems Alliance tattoos, or visible combat scars, or gang tattoos, or just that special look that announces someone is a dangerous person. The pirates no doubt intended to sell their prisoners to their less successful fellow kidnappers, for less than they’d get at a real slave market, but it was better than nothing, as they’d run out of room.

Her voice was a whisper. “When it starts, get everyone into the ship and take those two pirates apart.”

Her estimation of the man was right. He didn’t ask what would be starting, or who she was, he just became slightly more alert and nodded almost imperceptibly. Shepard had evaluated the guards while waiting. Four Batarians in standard gear, spread out and bullying the captives. Standard soldiers. Not a large threat to her, but their assault rifles would let them massacre the prisoners if they weren’t stopped fast; a Salarian engineer and a Turian (probably an infiltration expert from her movements and the sniper rifle held easily in taloned hands) were talking to one side with an Asari maiden, obviously some sort of biotic. From the way she was staring at everything around them, she was young and inexperienced. Far more worrisome was the older Asari, maybe a matron, maybe still a maiden, but her body was thickening to matron. She carried the shotgun preferred by vanguards and who made all the other pirates nervous. A big problem. Then there was a Human male standing on his own, fiddling with a portable communications array. She couldn’t get a good read on him, might just be another soldier, but where the others were nervous about the Asari, they were almost in awe of the human. Worrisome.

The Asari both had their helmets off, the one to draw lustful eyes, the other to let everyone know they should look away and shudder at her passage. Neither was wearing the medium armor Shepard preferred, opting for speed over protection. She walked right up to the vanguard, lean and dangerous, hands resting casually on her weapons, spoke a few words of greeting then with neither warning nor provocation, pulled the pistol she’d taken from the Salarian out, slammed it into the soft armor over her belly and pulled the trigger until the weapon overheated.

Usually Shepard would have gone for a quicker, cleaner kill, but it was the best she could manage with her left hand and almost no attention. Her own pistol in her right hand and her focus was on the more difficult shot at the group across the way. At that distance and under the time crunch she was under _and_ with them beginning to react, she couldn’t manage the headshot she’d hoped for and the high explosive round slammed into the scrambling maiden’s chest. The explosive shock pulped the Asari inside her armor, despite her shields, and the fireball and concussive force sent the Turian and the Salarian to the ground, wounded or dead she couldn’t tell, though the smart money was on the former.

That left five. Shepard sprinted away from the prisoners, not **charging** to conceal her capabilities from the pirate scum. Bullets began to impact her shields before she made it to the piece of cover she’d picked out, a stolen aircar packed with loot. A burst from a Batarian assault rifle shattered the marble head of an ugly statue sticking out of the car’s sunroof like the universe’s ugliest bridesmaid out on the hen night from hell. Her shields whined, but held until she was under cover, but with both her pistols overheated and no grenades, her position was bad.

The Batarians weren’t soldiers, but they were obviously experienced fighters and used to working together. All four had opened up on her instantly, covering each other as they moved into cover. They’d focused on her rather than the civilians, but half a dozen of the unarmored Humans were thrashing on the ground in their own blood, just in the wrong place to catch a bullet meant for her.

Shepard could only keep her helmeted head out of cover for a second, but it was enough to see what they were planning and to see that the Human had vanished. So, four soldiers and an infiltrator. What a wonderful situation. On the other hand, the civilians were clearing out fast. At least those who were still alive.

In just a moment one of the Batarians would start moving up while the other covered him, until they’d flanked her. They wouldn’t wait for her weapons to dump their excess heat, and the moment she moved to try to hit them with any biotics, they’d duck down into cover.

It was time to get creative. She popped up and flicked a **warp** towards the nearest Batarian. He ducked back the moment he saw the glow of blue, though his fellows kept firing. Shields almost drained, Shepard stayed out of cover long enough to see the warp impact the concrete brace the pirate was hiding behind. The timing would be tight, but her shields managed to recharge half-way before she had to pop out of cover and toss a **throw** at the cover.

The resulting explosion as the two biotic forces interacted shattered the concrete, tossing the pirate to the ground and spattering the surrounding area with shrapnel. One of the other raiders shrieked and raced towards the injured Batarian, one of the others popped out of cover, stared for a moment, and rushed towards Shepard. The final Batarian kept his head and advanced to cover his injured comrade. From the screaming fury of the erstwhile medic, she gathered they were all brothers. Her weapons finally were ready to fire again as the charging Batarian rounded the edge of her cover. She went around the other side and fired the high explosive round into the group clustered around the wounded man. In fact, she fired on the wounded man whose shields were still down. The round exploded against his armor, adding shrapnel to the fireball and shockwave the round produced. Three of the four were down, probably dead, but definitely not shooting at her.

Shepard started to turn back to the one pursuing her, only to be tackled from behind. Shoved face-first into the concrete of the landing pad, with almost a hundred kilos of Batarian and Batarian equipment on top of her, she was in real trouble, not even considering the Human who was somewhere around. She’d lost track of him, as he hadn’t shot at her, which probably meant he was **cloaked** and sneaking around somewhere. A vicious elbow strike towards the Batarian’s unarmored head was tugged short by her armor and evaded by the man who slammed her helmeted head against the concrete. He was all fury and fists, but it’s hard to kill someone in modern body-armor with your bare hands.

The weight lifted off her back and a powerful kick to her head left her seeing stars. Shepard rolled over from the force of it, hand scrabbling for a weapon, any weapon as her eyes slowly focused on the assault rifle the Batarian was lifting to aim at her. Terror and hate burned away the fog of fear and pain in her brain. She kicked out hard against the pirate’s knee, bringing him down atop her which sucked, but it brought the rifle within reach and she grabbed its barrel with her left hand holding its muzzle away from her. The slaver pulled the trigger a moment too late, the rounds impacted concrete right next to her head, sending chips and ricochets everywhere, but they lacked the force to penetrate her helmet, but sooner or later a chip would find its way through the weaker, flexible material protecting her neck.

Before that could happen, she pulled her knife loose (awkward with him mostly on top of her, but he was focused on the rifle) and stabbed for the hip joint, hoping to sever one of the arteries there. Stabbing blind, she hit the armor plate, skidding along it, drawing the Batarian’s attention. One of his hands left the rifle and caught her knife-hand, his superior strength slowly forcing it back, but he couldn’t force the blade from her hand. They stayed there for a long moment neither able to gain an advantage until the gun shrieked and hissed as it overheated and the Batarian released it to grab her knife-hand with both of his.

As he tried to pry the knife from her hand, Shepard awkwardly lifted the rifle towards his face. The white hot muzzle accidentally dragged across her helmet, melting the outer layer of the armor before it reached the Batarian’s hands, which had instinctively interposed themselves between his naked face and the glowing metal. Shepard’s now free knife hand plunged into the Batarian’s knee joint, provoking a scream. The Batarian pushed down hard on the assault rifle, forcing the still-glowing muzzle of the rifle towards Shepard’s helmet with insane strength. She writhed aside, dodging the rifle, swirling the knife around inside the Batarian’s leg, searching for an artery. Before their struggle could end, the Batarian suddenly went still as he took a strike to the back of his head from what appeared to be the arm of the hideous statue. Driven by a massively muscled human, the marble arm broke the Batarian’s skull easily.

“Thanks,” she took the hand the civilian offered as he pulled her to her feet. It took an effort to suppress the tremors in her hands which overuse of her biotics and stress had brought on. But she couldn’t show weakness in front of a hardcase like this one. The civilian was one of those she’d saved, who she recognized only by his absurd musculature. Several others from the group of troublemakers were still outside the ship. The man with Systems Alliance tattoos was keeping watch towards the gate while a pair of Humans who looked enough alike to be siblings, but hopefully weren’t, were finishing off the wounded pirates with a cheerful sadism that was a bit worrisome. The wounded captives were either dead, or disappeared, which Shepard didn’t notice, distracted by ripping her blade from the Batarian’s leg, cleaning the bloody blade and sheathing it.

“Who are you?” the Human asked, staring at the carnage that surrounded her. His accent suggested he’d grown up on the colony, though he was too old to actually be a native.

“Lieutenant Shepard. Get everyone back on the ship and find me a pilot. We need to leave.”

“We’ll never make it off the planet, I heard them talking, most of their fleet is still in orbit.”

Shepard grinned, “Why would we leave? I’ve still got three days of shore leave here, but I’m not spending it at the port, no, no, no, I’ll spend it downtown, like any other soldier on leave. So, go find me someone to chauffeur me there.”

The muscle-bound brute smiled back at her, her grin must have been audible in her voice as her helmet shielded her from view. “It’s where all the good parties are.”

“Feel free to help yourselves to any party favors you see lying around,” Shepard added as the others began to gather around her. She caught a few confused glances from the folks who’d missed the first part of the conversation. “Grab all the guns and get on the ship.”

All of those singled out as troublemakers had already grabbed their preferred weapon off a corpse, but that still left a good number of unclaimed weapons on the ground. The Batarians especially had carried a full loadout, prioritizing versatility over weight. Remembering the massive frame of the Batarian as he tried to beat her to death, Shepard couldn’t say that was the wrong call for them.

She was keeping a sharp eye out for the Human who’d been part of the guard force, or the shimmer of a tactical **cloak** , but didn’t spot anything. While her new comrades gathered the weapons, she considered what that could mean. The Human could have fled, or he could be trying to turn this around on her. The hulking transport had thousands of captives packed into cargo pods which should have been filled with fresh crops intended for the wealthy on Earth or the Citadel. If he took out the engines, then they’d be trapped within the vessel which should have been their ticket to freedom.

“Back inside. Now. You,” a finger pointed at the over-muscled man, “find me a pilot. You,” she pointed at the man with the System’s Alliance tattoo, “take them,” her hand swept over a giggling blood-spattered pair of Humans carrying a dozen guns between them, “and secure the bridge. Arm a couple of folks who know what they’re doing and set them to watch the entrances. Lock ‘em down as best you can,” now she was moving as she spoke.

The man didn’t salute, but spoke with a soft Japanese accent that matched his features, “Yes, sir.”

“And what’ll you be doing while we’re doing that?” asked one of the pair staggering under weaponry.

“Checking engineering, to make sure they don’t do to us what I did to that,” she waved at the other transport just before moving inside. Looking back was a mistake, as she tripped over the corpses of the guards inside. They’d been ripped apart by the mob of furious people, though the armor had prevented it from being too literal, only one of them had actually lost an arm, but both of them had makeshift weapons sticking out of every joint and soft part of their armor, from the bruises and broken bones she saw on the prisoners around, they hadn’t gone easily, but they’d definitely gone.

It was in climbing back to her feet that she saw where the wounded prisoners had gone. They’d been dragged inside and were being treated by someone in scrubs. Well, if pushing really hard, wrapping bleeding holes in cloth, crying and swearing could be counted as treatment. But he didn’t have the equipment to do any better. There were three of them still alive and whimpering, two elderly men and an equally elderly woman. They’d been gagged to keep their desperate pained cries from panicking the captives who were trapped with nowhere to go and nothing to do except panic.

Shepard moved so fast she didn’t even remember rising and sliding between the doctor and the wounded. The medigel dispenser in her glove activated as she pressed it against the bleeding wound. The clear salve spread over the wounds, sliding through their perforated body, stopping the bleeding as the anesthetic in the medigel stopped the pain. Shepard treated the second and third civilian before the doctor had recovered enough to speak. “Oh, thank goodness, someone who knows what they’re doing. I’m just an orderly!”

Shepard ratcheted her expectations down several notches and her respect for the man up several notches. “Don’t let them move, and they’ll still be alive when we get out of here.” Probably.

It wasn’t until she’d started moving away that she recognized that her new comrades were staring at her. “You’ve got jobs to do!” They scurried away, handing out guns like candy, though they were received with far greater enthusiasm by the terrified civilians.

Two doses of medigel left. That was it. Not good, but this hadn’t been a campaign with many wounds, the dead might be stacked in the street like cordwood, but the slavers hadn’t left many wounded behind. Her feet took her towards engineering, eyes watching the corners automatically as the pistols found their way into her hands.

Despite all of her concerns, the room was empty. She relaxed, just in time to hear two clicks again and tension flowed back through her, hands tightening on the base of her guns. A deep breath and she forced herself to relax enough to let her weapons reattach to her armor. A dozen men and women came in, even as she was searching the place for any sign of explosives.

They were engineers. Not starship engineers, but they could read a console. They’d been sent by one of her people. After a moment’s thought, she nodded and retreated to the bridge. A woman was sitting at the flight controls, “You found me a pilot, excellent,” Shepard said, taking the captain’s seat to buy herself a minute to rest.

“Shuttle pilot!” the woman snapped irritably.

“Better’n I could do,” Shepard countered.

The pilot shrugged. “Fine. Where am I taking this behemoth?”

“Bring up a map, will you?” Shepard asked the over-muscled man.

His omni-tool (well, the one he was wearing, its blood-spattered nature and his former status as a prisoner suggested it wasn’t his) brought up a map of the city. It had all been built in a hub pattern around the massive first colony ship, and the open square surrounding it, with five streets leading into it. Two were mainly massive train routes and after bringing the civilians into the square, they’d shut down the trains at the intersection, blocking those roads quite effectively. One led exactly away from where the pirates had landed, and no one but a couple of stragglers had come up that way and they’d been picked off by a few hunters keeping watch. One of the other two roads had been blocked when Captain Gupta had the _SSV Tsushima_ come down across it rather than try to escape out of the gravity well in the face of a massive pirate force. Her surviving crew still held that road.

Commander McCauley had set up his barricade across the last road and that road was still being held by the last of the actual soldiers. “Here,” Shepard tapped a point about two hundred meters further out from the square than where the soldiers should be. Her finger went right through the hologram of course, but it was clear where she was pointing. “Bring us down here.”

“You’re insane,” the pilot’s voice was flat.

“It’ll block the main remaining passage.”

“Like a fucking _baseball_ in a bottle.”

“Isn’t the saying ‘like a cork in a bottle’?” the woman of the bloody-handed pair asked.

“No! Because a cork fits in a fucking bottle!”

“We’ll fill the road,” Shepard pointed out.

“And then some! We’ll be scraping through the buildings.”

“The ship’s tough enough to survive that,” the over-muscled man said.

“Get everyone strapped down as far inside as they can fit. We’re taking off in five minutes.” Shepard ordered.

The pilot stared at them all, then began to mutter what Shepard was absolutely certain were Russian curses, though they were too quiet for her translator to pick up. But since she turned back to the flight controls and began running pre-flight checks, Shepard didn’t bother trying to squelch her. The others scattered about the ship, warning everyone to strap in and she took the opportunity to rest, popping the locks on her helmet and pulling it off to examine the burn mark melting the side of the armor. The whole thing was weakened, but it was better than nothing.

It was oddly comforting to wrap the thick straps of the harness around herself. When that was complete, she’d done everything she could. Their survival was in the hands of the pilot now. There was nothing more she needed to do, no more decisions to make, no more lives depending on her choices. She could just be another grunt waiting to hit the dirt. Food would have been better, but this was enough. Shepard would be ready for the next battle, she was sure of it.

* * *

## 2176 CE, Captured Pirate Frigate _Lotek_ , Batalla System

Nihlus had the good sense to listen to his doctor and rest while the ship made its trip to the main pirate base. The medigel helped, but being shot was still no joke. Not that the joke the doctor had told while repairing the damage, some nonsensical, lengthy bit about three Hanar, a Drell and an Asari was worth the title.

* * *

## 2176 CE Hyetiana

Justicar Samara did not dance aside. She was too old for dancing. Instead, she simply wasn’t there when the strike swept through the spot she’d been standing. The maiden tried to turn the failed strike into a backhand, but Samara caught the maiden’s wrist and crushed it with a single biotic squeeze. The woman collapsed, clutching her injured arm and Samara kept walking.

“ATTACK! FOR YOUR GODDESS!” her target bellowed.

The throng of maidens looked nervously between Samara and her target, trying to decide who they were more afraid of. Samara advanced and their eyes flicked to the whimpering Asari behind her and they gave way. The justicar examined her target carefully. The maiden’s figure was starting to thicken slightly, she was on the verge of the transition to the matron stage of her life.

A tall and impressive woman, her markings were in a dark purple that was almost black, which matched a gown that fell in loose ripples to the dirt of the ground. Samara could see how these back-world Asari could believe her an Ardat-Yakshi, but she felt none of the presence, none of the power, which those Ardat-Yakshi who succumbed to their hunger possessed. The lives and hopes stolen from their victims made them seem almost denser than those who surrounded them, like all things, all people should roll towards them, as if they distorted the very fabric of reality to pull you closer, like a star, or black hole. There was none of that here, just an impressive looking woman, which was why the maidens gave way. Well, that and the fact that Samara was a justicar and they feared to stand in her path.

The woman didn’t fall back, but instead brought both hands around, swirling in sharp, precise patterns and blue barriers snapped into place against her skin. Samara didn’t bother with the motions. Her barriers appeared as she walked forward with the same calm, even pace she always used. A half dozen steps out she stopped, surrounded by the target’s followers. “How did you do it?”

“Do what?” a blue hand ran over her markings and lips, down to an impressive chest, perhaps attempting to distract Samara with sensuality, perhaps attempting to entice her followers, but neither would work, not with the justicar matriarch there. “I’ve done so very many things,” she purred.

“Indeed. You have murdered and stolen many times over.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she swayed forward, menacing, trying to drive Samara back, make her give ground, show her to be weak. She did not move.

Instead Samara spoke, “I do, actually. You are Pilta T’nar,” she stepped forward and Pilta did step back, shocked. “Daughter of the privileged T’nar family of Thessia. You threw away every advantage an Asari could have in order to kill and con your way across a dozen worlds, while your family has covered up your crimes. It was believed that this,” a strong hand waved over the throng that surrounded her, “was another con, until the body was found. Then word was sent to the justicars, that an Ardat-Yakshi had killed someone. The evidence was quite clear. But,” Samara stepped forward again, “you are not an Ardat-Yakshi. So, I my question is clarified, how did you kill her?”

Pilta stomped a foot like a child, but her voice remained under her control, menacing and seductive in equal measure. “I am Ardat-Yakshi, I am the Goddess’s dark reflection, the demon of the night winds, to know my touch is to know the little death which encompasses all eternity!”

“I believed that you were Ardat-Yakshi, before I met you, but I have met them, hunted them and sent them to the Goddess. You are not Ardat-Yakshi. I will inform the justicars who are questioning your family of that fact,” Pilta blanched, skin lightening in terror. “It will not change their punishment, but they will go to the Goddess for the right reasons, rather than the wrong ones.”

Pilta screamed and attacked, graceful and fast. Her file didn’t indicate commando training, but she’d clearly undergone it at some point. Samara recognized the pattern of attacks as belonging to the Keltia School, which prioritized aggressive attacks, intended to cripple an enemy before they could respond. The strikes hit only air, not even coming close to landing a blow. Observing her opponent closely, Samara tried to figure out a way to deal with Pilta and still get the answers she needed. But the woman wouldn’t stop attacking and the Code offered only one response to such an assault.

Samara ducked under a blow to slip behind the criminal and a biotic blow launched the woman into the air. Pilta hit the ground a half-dozen yards away, face down, nose breaking on the ground despite the barriers which kept the justicar’s blow from breaking her spine. As Samara approached, her target’s hand vanished into the folds of her dress. When Samara was standing right next to her, she rolled over, just in time to catch a boot pressed against her throat.

Pilta’s hand rose, encased in some sort of metal glove, a filigreed outline of clawed fingers, a demon’s hand. It tried to claw at Samara, but the justicar’s boot slid off her throat and kicked out quite precisely, hitting the woman’s elbow. The blow wasn’t strong enough to break the joint, but it bought her a moment. She knelt, her other knee coming down on the Asari’s throat, crushing it as her hands caught the joint, slamming the gauntleted hand down. “Find peace in the embrace of the Goddess,” Samara said, holding the pressure in place until Pilta died under the eyes of her followers, none of whom dared interfere with the justicar’s execution of the woman they’d believed was a goddess.

Samara waited until the woman was dead, it took longer than people thought to suffocate, even with a crushed throat. With that done, she stripped the glove off the woman’s hand. “Do any of you know anything about this?”

She was met with a mute chorus of shaking heads. A quick search of the body, then the woman’s house revealed nothing helpful. One of the villagers gave her a lift to the nearest transit center, their terror making the trip more exciting than it needed to be, it still passed in silence.

Samara turned the glove over and over in her hands, examining it in detail. She was certain it was what had permitted that woman to kill in the same manner as an Ardat-Yakshi. While hiding some martial training was feasible, it seemed unlikely a criminal whose crimes were all focused on short-term gain would have the knowledge or ability to create such a device. Someone else had made it. Someone else who was accidentally muddying the waters of her pursuit. It was the corpses which gave her the leads she needed when her target disappeared. She couldn’t have other people killing in that fashion, which meant she had a new target, for now. This dealer in deadly technologies would be found and handled in accordance with the code.

That meant she needed help. She suppressed a sigh as she examined the destination of the ships departing Hyetania. Any of them would take her to their destination, but she needed a place with a tech expert and a forensic accountant, both of whom would assist a justicar. For no cost. Difficult. Her eye caught a name, Chalkhos, in the Terminus systems. A mostly Asari world, but in the Terminus, it would have need of a justicar and she might gain the assistance of skilled people there. It was most likely this technology had come from the Terminus systems, rather than the more law abiding Citadel space. Yes, it was as good a starting place as she was likely to get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Liberator finally arrives. A little too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply.

## 253.15 NC – The _Liberator_ , En Route to the Rendezvous Point

“Where’s Cally?” Jenna asked.

“Where’s Avon?” Vila countered.

Blake thought about what Vila was suggesting. He’d come within a hairsbreadth of going to Jenna last night, for fear of what was coming and hope that it could be avoided. But Avon was far colder than him, though if Cally went to him, the criminal programmer wasn’t a robot for all he appeared to aspire to the role. What little he’d heard about the business with Anna, Avon’s erstwhile partner made that clear. Some part of him wondered if such a pairing would be helpful in binding Avon more tightly to the group, or dangerous in giving Cally something to live for besides the rebellion. Most of him concluded that such a relationship would definitely be bad for Cally, who was a friend and didn’t deserve to have the loneliness her exile had inflicted upon her so exploited.

“You don’t really think…” Blake asked, then shuddered delicately.

“In my experience, no, none of them do really think. Though that hardly makes them unique on this ship,” Avon said having arrived unnoticed during this conversation, his stare making it clear that he included Blake in with those who failed to really think.

“Where’s Cally?” Vila asked, always willing to ask the stupid question, as he had nothing to lose.

“With Orac.”

There was a communal ‘what’ as they tried to even picture how that would work, what with Orac being a transparent box housing an A.I. with neither body nor any moving parts.

“Well, if she was interested in Avon, I guess it’s not a surprise that she’d end up with the most irritating A.I. in the galaxy,” Jenna said.

“Second most irritating,” Vila put in, giving Avon a supercilious smirk at having gotten one over on the programmer.

“Second most irritating what?” Cally asked from the door to the flight deck. She was lean and dangerous looking in the red jumpsuit she’d been wearing when they first met. “Sorry I’m late, I was using Orac—“ Vila whooped drunkenly. She ignored that, though some part of her considered the punishment for drunkenness on duty back on her increasingly militarized homeworld. She continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “…to contact Auron and warn them about what we expect. He was able to connect me directly to some people who might listen to me, despite everything. I’m afraid I lost track of time talking to them.”

A communal ‘oh’ followed this and all three of them looked relieved.

“What’s wrong with them?” Cally asked, drifting over to Avon, as he was the only one of the _Liberator_ ’s crew not acting insane.

“Nothing new,” Avon said.

Her lips quirked, almost against her will at the comment. It was so typically Avon. Vila didn’t catch the potential insult, Blake and Jenna did, but they didn’t reply, instead they looked a little embarrassed. She wondered what exactly they had been talking about before she arrived. It didn’t matter. “Zen, time to detector range of the rendezvous point?” She asked, taking her station and unslinging her rifle, placing it within easy reach, but secure enough that it would go flying across the room if they took a hit.

“Five minutes.”

“Activate the detector shield,” Avon ordered, taking his own station, directly behind hers. She could swear she could feel his dark gaze burning on her neck, ready to ask about the rifle.

“Confirmed,” Zen stated.

After joining the _Liberator_ on Saurian Major, she’d replaced it with one of the laser side-arms the odd craft had had ever since it was salvaged by its crew. They might have been less accurate and slower firing, but at least they could penetrate the armor Federation troops wore. Avon wouldn’t understand that the gun wasn’t there as a weapon, but rather as a reminder that she was a soldier again, not a rebel, at least for the moment. So was the jumpsuit. She was a woman under authority again, something none of the others would really understand. Vila and Jenna had never willingly been subject to authority, Blake was a rebel born, and anyone having power over him drove Avon absolutely mad.

Cally looked around the golden flight deck as the others took their positions. It was hard to feel a soldier amongst this company. Blake, tall and handsome, every inch the charismatic leader, carefully dressed in earth-toned civilian clothes to draw a sharp distinction between himself and the elaborately coiffed Federation elite; Jenna looked more like one of those elite, blonde and elegant, the pilot enjoyed dressing glamorously from the extensive closet the _Liberator_ had had when they took the ship, for the former smuggler understood just how much people judged and misjudged on appearances; and Vila, poor Vila, short and slight, he’d been raised under Federation rule like Avon and Blake, but lacked the privileges Blake’s status as an alpha grade, and Avon’s brilliance had bought them. The pride had been beaten out of Vila, but he still fought when he had to, she could respect that, but it was the fight of a cornered animal, not a soldier. That only left Avon, at her back, where he would not trust her to stand, he was all in black, strong, smart, ruthless, if not for his complete unwillingness to trust anyone she might have almost pretended he was a comrade in arms, but speaking to other Auronar reminded her how far from comrades the others truly were. Allies was the best she had. Allies whose minds were silent, making them impossible to truly understand for any telepath.

She shook off the malaise as Vila asked if this could be a trap.

“Anything is possible with the Federation,” Blake answered, falling back on a cliché for lack of an actual answer.

“Perhaps, but if so, it’s a good one. Detectors are showing no ships,” Avon pointed out.

“Could they be using detector shields?” Jenna put in.

“No,” Avon answered simply.

“Why not?” Blake snapped.

“Because I figured out how to detect the detector shields.”

“When?” Blake snapped.

“Shortly before Star One. Why do you think I went along with that operation?”

“Because you’d get the _Liberator_ while I—while we were uniting the worlds into a new order.”

Jenna flinched at that. The space-born pilot had no intention of giving up the _Liberator_ , the best ship in the galaxy, to Avon, or anyone else. The fact that Blake had no such love of the ship was apparently a surprise to the woman.

“That was the benefit of the cost-benefit analysis. However it was the existence of the detector shields detector which reduced the cost to an acceptable level,” Avon’s voice was even and uninflected.

“You mean we’ve been safe from hidden Federation ships for more than a month? Why didn’t you tell us?” Vila asked.

“You didn’t ask.”

“I’ve been worrying about—“

“You’re always worrying, Vila, that’s nothing new,” Jenna put in sharply. Taking out antipathy on Vila was half the reason the thief was still on the ship.

“Yes and right now I’m worried about where the fleet that was supposed to be here actually is!”

“Zen, how long until the battlegroup we encountered at Delarius 12 arrives?” Avon asked.

“Two hours, twenty three minutes—“

“Thank you Zen,” Jenna put in, cutting off the machine’s unnecessary precision. “They’re in an awful rush,” she noted.

“Information, the Federation battlegroup will have used 97% of its fuel upon arrival,” Zen interjected.

“So there must be a Federation base around here somewhere to refuel them,” Blake noted. “Anything on the detectors?”

“No,” Zen replied.

“We should—“ Vila began.

“We should do what we came here to do. Let’s get on with this,” Cally interrupted.

“And how do we do that? Where do we go?” Jenna countered.

“We’ve all said it, this is the rendezvous point near the Monolith, there’s nothing else out here.”

“Information, there is a five planet solar system within range of the battlegroups remaining fuel,” Zen said.

“Sounds like a good place to look,” Vila argued.

“We’re here because we’re afraid that aliens from another galaxy are invading. Do we think they’re in a random planetary system or in a system with a massive alien artifact of unknown origin and purpose?” Cally asked, cold as ice, doing her best Avon impression.

“She’s right,” Avon noted.

“You can’t be sure—“ Vila began.

“You can check with Orac if you want to be sure,” Cally said, producing the A.I.’s activation key and offering it to the thief.

“Zen, do we have enough power to keep the detector shield up while we go to the Monolith, without depleting more than one additional energy bank?” Blake asked.

“Yes,” Zen answered.

“No,” Avon put in.

“What?”

Cally could feel Avon rolling his eyes behind her. “Power is not the issue, so Zen is technically correct. What he isn’t telling you is that the hull will start ablating off if the detector shield is on for more than twenty minutes while the FTL drive is active.”

“What does ablate mean?” Vila asked.

“Be vaporized,” Blake answered.

“WHAT?”

“Be destroyed, demolished, smashed, broken,” Avon offered.

“I know what vaporized means! You’ve been using something that could destroy this entire ship? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because—“

“Zen, set course for the Monolith, at Standard by Six, go,” Cally ordered, tired of this debate.

“Confirmed,” Zen said.

“And turn off the detector shield!” Vila put in.

“Confirmed.”

“And turn it back on if you detect any Federation ships, or when we’re ten minutes out from the Monolith, whichever condition occurs first,” Avon added.

“Confirmed.”

Blake’s eyes narrowed, surprised by Cally’s sudden action. “Avon, check the battle computers, Vila, the transporters, Jenna, the engines. I want everything in tip-top condition before we do this,” he said, clearing the deck.

“Arm yourselves before you go. We don’t know if these aliens have teleport capability and we can’t have the force wall up all the time,” Cally added as the others began to head out, Vila grumbling, Jenna fuming and Avon being Avon.

Vila and Jenna turned back, Avon didn’t. He always went armed, as he didn’t trust the others. No, Cally had to remind herself, he didn’t trust anyone, even her. Probably. She wished she could hear his thoughts. It was impossible to lie with telepathy, but it only let her speak to the poor mundanes who lacked her senses, it didn’t let them talk back. There was never any way to be absolutely sure with them, that’s why she had to trust them, it was trust them or go mad, as Avon did.

“Cally, are you all right?” Blake asked, concerned.

“I am what I need to be in order to do what must be done,” light brown eyes remained locked on the console in front of her, though one hand absently stroked the butt of her rifle.

“What does that mean?”

“You saw that thing, that Space-Kraken? What it did at Star-One? You heard its transmission? It said everything would die. I heard what it did to Travis. A laser blast through his brain and he still came after you.” That was true.

“Yes, but—“

“This is not a rebellion. This is not a revolution. This is a war. I am the only one of you who is a soldier. I may have put it aside for a time to be something else, but that time is over,” her voice dropped, cold and level, “I will do whatever I must to destroy them. And bickering will not accomplish that.” Blake was reminded of Cally as he’d first seen her, the ambusher who’d interrogated him at gunpoint and intended to launch a one-woman attack on a base of two hundred Federation troopers.

“You don’t have to—“

“Blake.”

“Yes, Cally?”

“I’m going to go check the Neutron Blasters are cleared for action. Could you check the Plasma Bolt batteries?”

Blake thought about continuing the conversation, then thought the better of it. “Yes, Cally.”

* * *

## 253.15 NC – Command Ship _FNS Unity_ , Monolith System

“Three more destroyers down, ma’am, the 10th is down to five destroyers, there are no more to interpose between the Squids and the 10th’s main battle line,”

“The _Tolerance_ has been destroyed, ma’am, she ran right into one of the shells fired from the Squids across the system, the damn things don’t give off any signals once fired, our computers aren’t tracking them all—“

“Pursuit ship squadron seventeen has repulsed another attack from those one-man craft, but they’re at twenty percent effectives…”

Servalan listened impassively as the crew of the Command Ship burbled facts at her, as if she could not read the displays herself as well as any of them. She ignored them. Admiral Lana would handle this portion of the battle. What mattered was what was about to happen.

They’d deployed perfectly, despite the difficult of integrating so many distinct units. A perfect inverted wave formation, like someone had dropped a bowling ball in the middle of a sheet, frozen the sheet and turned it sideways with the enemy placed in the center. It was a classic formation, though, like completely englobing the enemy, it ran the risk of friendly fire. They’d enveloped the group that was attempting to assault the base on the odd spherical artifact. The enemy had reacted even before their ships had arrived, abandoning their assault on the stations and racing to support the besieged fellows. Her ships were attempting to push the enemy back into range of the base’s main guns.

The enemy was trying to keep the range open, and was keeping quite precisely out of range of those guns. Their security was compromised, though the mine-sweepers had made her pretty sure of that already. She made a mental note to light a fire under the researchers looking into how the hell they’d compromised the staff of Star One. They would win this battle, but that wouldn’t be the end of it, she was sure.

Speaking of winning the battle, it was time. In just a few minutes the enemy would either have to retreat into range of the base’s guns, or attack and try to punch through a weak point, which meant it was time to spring her little surprise. A brilliant smile crossed her beautiful face as she pushed a button and took control of the mines clustered behind the shields of the remaining base. They swept up and out, racing towards the enemy’s rear. The moment the enemies light-speed scanners detected the mines’ movement, the enemy instantly broke for the weak-spot left by the destruction of the _Tolerance_ , but it was too little, too late. They’d thought she meant to use that set of mines to destroy her second base, just as she had the first, forgetting the damn things could move.

The swarm of mines was large and spread out. The enemy had chosen the optimal path to avoid most of the mines, and what rearward facing weapons they had were reaping a rich harvest of the mines, but there were simply too many mines to try to fight their way through. The first of the enemy ships entered optimal range of her ships main weapons and simply vanished, vaporized by the hammer blow of two hundred heavy particle cannon, firing from a hundred battleships.

Admiral Lana was screaming orders as the next two ships managed to use their secondary weapons to destroy a dozen pursuit ships and half as many destroyers and cruisers while the battleships’ cannon were recharging. They were pounded apart by no more than ten battleships each as the remainder focused on the next wave.

There had been thirty enemy ships when they started and two had been destroyed by coordinated fire at long range when they’d first emerged from FTL. With the destruction of their three ship vanguard, the twenty-five remaining ships formed a tight sphere, roiling around to expose each ship to enemy fire for as short a period as possible before sliding back within the sphere, protected by its fellows shields, to recharge its defenses. Admiral Lana focused her fire on two ships at a time. The distance between her ships would have made that impossible with the railguns the enemy used, but with particle cannons which travelled at the speed of light, the time difference between the impacts was small enough to let them batter ships to bits before they could escape.

Admiral Lana laughed and typed in a set of commands. The battleships retargeted and blew apart the enemy ships at the point of their formation as they turned inward to retreat. The enemy formation scattered rather than run into huge fragments of their fellows at a significant fraction of the speed of light. The remaining twenty or so ships headed for the closest Federation ships, looking to find something to hide behind which the battleships would not fire upon. Unfortunately for them, in reforming and hiding, they lost their lead on the mines which fell upon their rear, nuclear fire bursting up and through focusing lenses, destroying the mine and propelling a massive burst of energy and radiation forward at the speed of light, spearing the enemy vessels from behind, shattering shields and armor alike. Only three of the vessels made it in and among the Federation ships. Those three ripped into her ships, destroying thrice their number in Federation ships before being brought down by the sheer weight of numbers, as the battleships couldn’t shift targeting fast enough.

Servalan actually grinned as she saw the last of the enemy ships explode. The enemy ships were spread out across the system in eight groups, only one as large as that they’d already destroyed. “This one next?” Admiral Lana asked, highlighting the nearest of the groups.

“Agreed.”

The admiral transmitted the commands to the rest of the fleet and they moved out to where they could make the jump to FTL, racing forwards for mere moments then dropping out as close to the enemy ships as they could, which wasn’t that close due to the limitations on the use of FTL drives near massive objects. The enemy ships tried to kill their forward momentum, but even with their absurd maneuverability and powerful engines, they weren’t able to do so before reaching optimal weapons range and the Federation fleet pounded them to pieces.

The remainder of the enemy ships began to move towards each other, seeking to consolidate, rather than let themselves be defeated separately. They were too close to the Monolith for the Federation fleet to repeat the tactic of using FTL to close the gap.

Instead the fleet raced forward at the best slower-than-light speed they could manage without creating relativistic problems for themselves. The enemy fell back, trying to escape the Monolith’s gravity well and make the jump to FTL. Or so she assumed, she didn’t actually know how their FTL drives worked. If they got away, those ships would wreak havoc throughout the Federation, especially since she couldn’t track them while they were using their own FTL drives, unlike those using the FTL drives common in this galaxy. Instead the Squids simply appeared and disappeared. A truly unfair advantage.

As the enemy had been forced to kill their forward momentum in order to retreat, the Federation Fleet would be able catch up with the enemy, the only question was whether it would be soon enough. The computer said it wouldn’t be for their FTL system, but who knew how the enemy’s engines worked? They would overtake the enemy in ninety three minutes.

Servalan left the bridge and returned to her office for an excellent meal while her fleet and the mines raced across the system. No one on the bridge would ever know that she was watching events unfold on the display in her office. As far as they knew, she had absolute faith in their abilities and was certain of victory. Which meant that even before the ship shuddered, she saw enemy capital ships simply appear behind them, in groups of ten, floating near the Monolith, and the enemy vessels they’d been pursuing suddenly turned and began to burn back towards them, the enemy fleet would stop just short of where her fleet would be able to jump to FTL. If they slowed down any, then the forces behind them would crush them.

There was only one question left, up, or down, left, or right? Since the majority of the ships guns were mounted on the top, diving down, but continuing forward at full speed would decrease their exposure to the enemy fleet in front of them as they punched through and jumped to FTL.

* * *

## 253.15 NC – The _Liberator_ , Outside the Monolith System

“Information, six hundred and twenty three Federation ships are within detector range. Detector shield is active,” Zen said.

“Where are they headed?” Blake asked.

“The planetary system previously discussed.”

“Weren’t they supposed to have like a thousand ships?” Vila asked nervously.

“Information, 63.27% of the Federation ships show battle damage.”

“Set course for the planetary system, keep us out of range of their detectors,” Blake ordered.

“Confirmed.”

“Disable the detector shield as soon as we’re outside the range of their detectors,” Avon added.

“Confirmed.”

“Why are we doing this? We missed the battle. Shouldn’t we be trying to take advantage of the Federation’s weakness and distraction to break their control, I mean, isn’t that why we went to Star One? Isn’t that why we attacked Control? Isn’t that what Gan gave his _life_ for?” Vila argued.

Blake’s eyes blazed with fury at the mention of the crewman who’d sacrificed himself in the futile attack on Control. “Don’t you dare bring up G—“ he said, stepping forward, hands clenched at his sides.

Cally interrupted them by sliding Orac’s activation key into place. “Why is the Federation fleet heading to the planetary system?”

“Because the aliens ambushed them and forced them to retreat,” Orac explained, without needing a moment to think.

“You just knew that?” Jenna asked, surprised by that and the absence of complaint about being distracted from his real work.

“I’m evaluating their data. The alien systems don’t use tarriel cells, so I have to rely upon the data the Federation has gathered on the alien’s technology. It is fascinating. I must know more. Their technology is entirely different from ours. I don’t understand how it can be so advanced without using tarriel cells. These gaps in my knowledge are unacceptable. I insist that we investigate the—“

Cally pulled the activation key out, silencing the A.I. and leaving it to its investigations and research. The machine, created by the inventor of tarriel cells, could access any system based on that hardware system which had an external connector. As that was, previously, every computer system, its power was matched only by its arrogance, and its need for the activation key in order to take any action beyond information gathering.

“I vote to proceed to the planetary system,” Cally said.

Jenna nodded. “Agreed, I wouldn’t want to try to fight something that could destroy four hundred Federation ships on my own.”

“I _don’t_ want to face anything that _did_ destroy four hundred Federation ships!” Vila argued.

“Is that a ‘no’ vote?” Blake asked.

“I prefer to think of it as a vote for survival.”

“Well, I vote to protect humanity,” Blake put in.

Everyone turned to Avon, who simply continued working, reviewing the data Orac streamed to his console, despite the deactivation of his speakers. This was a disaster. Though the casualties appeared approximately even, with both fleet losing approximately four hundred ships. However, the vast majority of the enemy’s casualties were from the mines and were escort vessels, while Servalan’s fleet had lost almost two thirds of its capital ships and the remainder were amongst the most badly damaged of her ships.

“Avon, your vote?” Blake asked after almost a minute.

“There’s already three votes in favor. My vote is unnecessary.”

“Unless you have a better idea?” Vila put in hopefully.

“I do not.”

“Then we continue on,” Cally stated, passing the key back to Avon without comment, a silent peace-offering. It was unusual for him to let the tech out of his possession. It was probably simply that he had no interest in sitting up and listening to her talk to her people and he knew she was too honest to steal it. No other explanation made sense. No other explanation could be explored at this moment. Their eyes met for a moment.

“Is it too late to change my vote?” the typically Vila question broke the moment.

* * *

## 253.15 NC – Command Ship _FNS Unity_ , at the edge of the Fortress System

“All fleet vessels are moving to refuel, rearm and repair, with the least damaged forming a screen,” Admiral Lana stated.

“And the other fleets?” Pel asked.

“Moving to support us, but they’re mostly lighter fleet elements, only about a hundred battleships in all,” the admiral stated, as if the psychostrategist was somehow unaware. They’d already integrated the ships which had arrived too late to join in the first battle, but there was no disguising the fact that they’d been badly mauled.

Servalan ignored her staff officers as they went about bickering about who knew what. Instead, she was watching the feeds coming in from their remaining bases in the Monolith System. After their casualties, the aliens had blasted the space stations apart, but they’d been far more careful of the base remaining upon the spherical artifact. The smaller ships had suffered heavy casualties closing in then carefully picked off each of the cannon batteries. With the path clear, a set of what were clearly troop transports landed and began to offload troops.

The enemy troops were the first sight of the enemy and they’d all watched the assault avidly, slightly concerned to see a dozen types of oddly shaped creatures pour out of the transports into the volleys of fire coming from the mutoid troops stationed on the base. The discovery that the aliens had some sort of personal shielding was a nasty surprise. It took almost a dozen shots from one of the usual rifles to take one down, so the first defensive positions were quickly overrun. The base commander had resorted to venting entire sections of atmosphere to stop the advance.

While the enemy was delayed, they discovered that what they were seeing was probably not their true enemy, as the creatures dragged a struggling mutoid to an odd device which drove a spike directly through the mutoid’s body and transformed the mutoid into a monstrous creature which promptly led the assault on the next defensive position. They did the same with the corpses of those who had fallen trying to stop them. The superstitious whispers about zombies were stilled with a glare around the room, but that didn’t quell the terror on her subordinates’ faces.

What was worse was when they’d brought in one of their massive capital ships. It had simply hovered over the base and she’d watched as the base’s command staff began to change. General Alex Devor was a hard-bitten, whey-faced woman who’d maintained order on the rebellious world of Mandilake for a decade before being assigned to this critical post. In her youth, she’d been captured and tortured for information by enemies of the Federation for three weeks, during which time she had given them nothing. Loyal beyond question (or as close as anyone came in Servalan’s service), tough, intelligent and resourceful, she had been chosen because Servalan believed she would stubbornly hold the line even as her base was reduced to rubble, forcing the enemy to leave significant forces behind to deal with her, even if they’d overrun the system.

So it was something of a shock when she and three other members of her command staff pulled out there weapons and massacred their fellows, then vented the atmosphere of the rest of the base and sat down to await the arrival of the enemy forces. It was even more of a shock when they went along quietly and obediently lay down on the conversion spikes. Servalan had recognized the look on the general’s face as she butchered her own troops. It was the look of someone under mind control. Usually that look was comforting, as the Federation specialized in mind control and brainwashing, but this was…There had been no surgery, no drugs, no painful hours of physical abuse to put the subject in the right frame of mind. And it wasn’t mere physical control of the body, the general had disabled all the surveillance and communication systems of which she’d been aware, which wasn’t all of them, of course.

The mere presence of the enemy seemed to corrupt and twist the mind, rendering them mere puppets. Which meant there was no way to launch their own boarding actions to discover anything about their true enemy, undoubtedly hiding within those massive capital ships. Without any real information about the enemy, many of the Federations preferred methods, especially bad-faith negotiation, blackmail, espionage, assassination and biological warfare were simply impossible.

Servalan’s fingers danced over the controls as she watched her troops being transformed into servants of this horrifically overpowered enemy. She hadn’t finished drafting the orders by the time the enemy capital ship’s engines began to fire and she activated the base’s Omega Protocol and destroy it utterly, doing cruel damage to the enemy capital ship and destroying two of their troop transports as well as their complement of monsters. Most crucially, they had denied the enemy any profit from their victory. It was that tactic which would force these aliens to communicate.

The others members of her command group were busy organizing the fleet operations and no one dared to question what the Supreme Commander was doing. None of them would ever know that she’d sent personal orders to every ground commander in the Federation, personally authorizing and ordering them to engage their own Omega Protocols in the event of attack by a force they could not defeat. 

She’d almost sent a simple broad beam, but on consideration it was better to send individual orders. They were more likely to follow their orders if they believed that only a small part of the Federation would be sacrificed to protect the rest, and if they believed that they could hitch a ride on a commercial vessel and survive somewhere, which she was beginning to doubt. The evidence regarding past wars which had prompted the fortification of the Monolith system, suggested that the enemy did not seek conquest, but destruction. That didn’t make any sense. What benefit could be gained by the destruction of a population without replacing them with anything?

If this was the enemy which had emptied their galaxy of life, opening it to the Federation’s conquest, then why had they not remained, filling it with their own people? The only thing which made any sense was that both sides were destroyed by the war. Seeing the enemy now, that seemed…improbable, which meant that she did not understand what the enemy wanted. That was what made her fairly certain that she was going to lose. Especially as she watched the enemy fleet gather around the spherical artifact and simply vanish from all sensors.

At the psychostrategist’s suggestion, a task force was dispatched to investigate the remains of the alien ships. There would be corpses amongst them. When they knew what the enemy was, then they would be able to turn the situation to their advantage, just as they always did. Just as she always did. She was Servalan, Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation. It had to be this conversion process, which turned her people into theirs. That was what they wanted, and so she would force them to negotiate for it. That would work. There were always slaves, or Delta grades to be traded, or sold. She would find a way. She could win. She _would_ win.

And if not, well, she had a contingency plan. Like always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's day finally ends. Garrus burns some bridges. Jack makes a discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply.
> 
> I know that the Federation ships did ridiculously well against the enemy (okay, fine, it’s obviously the Reapers) in the last chapter. But unlike the other cycles, the Federation never figured out the mass effect relays and so developed along entirely independent lines. They don’t use railguns, but energy weapons and they use extremely different shields and engines as well.
> 
> Their failure to do so also meant that the Citadel was never more than a curiosity and very definitively not the center of their civilization. Moreover, the Reapers favored tactic of shutting down the relays to prevent forces from massing is completely ineffective. The end result is that the Federation and the Reapers are outside context enemies for each other, relying upon entirely different technologies. However, due to the existence of the Reaper rear-guard and the absence of the Conduit team’s alterations to the Citadel the Reapers had knowledge of the Federation’s technologies and plans, but the reverse is most definitely not true. The Federation is working from historical record and the paranoia of its leadership, nothing more.
> 
> I’m also aware that I’m changing the canon way standard (non-relay) FTL works for the Mass Effect ‘Verse (and maybe for Blake’s 7, though they never explain how that FTL works). The reason for that is because, as written, there’s simply no way to defend anything, or have any large fleet engagements. You could simply appear, fire on the planet before anyone knew you were there and FTL out, completely unengageable. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine any large scale fleet engagement taking place, because the instant one side is threatened, it could simply go to FTL, reappear by the winning side’s home-world and say ‘withdraw or I’ll glass the planet’. This also complies with the ME2 and ME3 maps, where you can only jump out from the outer perimeter of a system.

## 2176 CE, Elysium

Three compartments were sliced apart by laser fire from one of the pirate ships GARDIAN batteries, but the bulk transport was a big ship and the only raider ship to fire didn’t have an angle on the engines, so the ship itself wasn’t seriously harmed. Nineteen people were killed, but the rest of the people in those compartments were all right as the ship had remained in the atmosphere so there was none of the decompression which would have killed hundreds if they’d taken that fire in a vacuum.

The pilot’s stream of cursing was clearly audible as she raced towards the landing zone Shepard had marked out, slaloming between buildings rather than rise high enough to be targeted by any of the still-grounded enemy ships. None had lifted off to pursue their erstwhile captives, but they might call in a strike from one of the many ships still in orbit, or request support from the ships raiding the outlying settlements and farming villages scattered about Elysium. And there was still the question of the missing Human raider. It was definitely better to be on the ground quickly.

“HOLD ON!” the pilot shrieked as the ground approached far too quickly. With a sudden jerk the Element Zero core lessened their mass significantly as thrusters slowed their descent. Sliding between two buildings not quite large enough to permit passage also slowed their approach. Shepard was used to ship travel being essentially silent except for the sounds of the ship itself, but they were in atmosphere. Everyone could hear the horrible scream of metal on metal as the massive transport widened the distance between two large buildings. For a moment the ship hung, pinned between the two and the pilot drove the mass of the ship back up, forcing it to slide down to the pavement of the road. She wasn’t quite fast enough to cancel it before their increased mass drove them into the concrete of the road.

Shepard’s fingers let go of the arms of her chair after only about thirty seconds, which put her a good minute ahead of everyone else on the flight deck. Except for the pilot, none of the others had even opened their eyes. Warning lights announced damage to…well, everywhere on the ship, Shepard absorbed it in a moment, then turned back to her other duties. A hand brought up their current location as best her omni-tool could tell with all the satellites downed. “Good work,” she said as she undid her harness. “You were within twenty yards of where I pointed.”

The pilot nodded, gave Shepard a thumbs up, then bent over and vomited. The N6 would have gone to comfort her and roused the others on the deck, if not for the single click which came over her comms system. The troops she’d left behind were being overrun.

“On your feet boys and girls. It’s time to fight. The belly hatch is blocked, so we’ll use the side airlocks. Those of us with guns first. Clear the road to the city square and then we’ll move the civilians out and refortify,” she was yelling as she moved towards the nearest airlock. “Anyone who’s not armed stay put, everyone else is with me.”

Men and women flowed out from among the crowd, all of them armed, though she saw some were carrying knives or makeshift clubs. “Armed means guns, folks,” Shepard yelled without breaking stride.

She dodged an unarmored man holding a pistol trying to get to the airlock, somewhat delayed by a pair of small children hanging onto his legs, trying to stop him. Shepard hurdled them without breaking stride and reached the airlock. The interior airlock door opened easily enough, but the exterior airlock door was jammed with the bottom crumpled against the pavement. Fortunately the door opened vertically, and the top half opened easily. She climbed over the bottom half of the door and out into the open air. Only the ships generally cigar-like shape gave her any space at all as the upper portion of the full was pressed into the buildings on either side, but she could move under the curve of the hull out towards the town center and the sounds of battle. Her troops weren’t dead yet.

The people following her balked at the airlock door. She glanced back and saw why. The impact had heated metal of the hull and the concrete of the road to an unbearable degree for an unarmored human. A waved hand and a shouted command sent them searching for another way out while Shepard proceeded alone.

Half a dozen Batarians were scattered around, sprawled on the ground, half buried from the impact of the ship. With some difficulty she resisted the urge to put a round in the groaning, injured enemy, preferring to preserve what surprise remained to her. A ship crash didn’t necessarily, or even usually, indicate an invasion by ground forces and the Batarians were in no shape to communicate anything.

The positions her troops had previously held were easily identifiable by the damage those areas had taken. Holes pockmarked the storefronts, windows were shattered, walls destroyed by grenades and heavy weapons and the corpses of pirates who’d tried to overrun fixed positions held by System’s Alliance soldiers, by her soldiers. And they were hers, for all that she didn’t know any of their names. The order to hold had been hers, as was the responsibility for the consequences, she stepped over the blood-stained remnants of a standard issue Alliance helmet.

She passed another strong point her troops had been forced to abandon. This time the enemy corpses were all Vorcha. Whoever was running the enemy forces had decided to call in shock troops to break through the defenses her troops had once held. Shepard cursed her lack of incendiary rounds. Without them Vorcha were damnably difficult to kill and where you found Vorcha, you would probably find Krogan running them and Krogan were damnably difficult to kill even with incendiary rounds.

Shepard sped up. Vorcha were unlikely to bother with ambushes, or on anything except attacking whoever was in front of them. Finally after what seemed an eternity she reached the last defenses.

Her troops had jammed several vehicles across the road and used them as cover, while sharpshooters in the surrounding buildings picked off anyone with a heavy weapon, or who tried to approach in a vehicle. Or so she guessed given the size of the holes in windshields and bodies sprawled by missile and grenade launchers, flamethrowers. It must have worked for a while, but ugly gaping caverns in the surrounding buildings made it clear that eventually the snipers had been picked off, at a guess by the Krogan, half of whose corpse lay across a massive missile launcher. The Krogan would have taken far more fire than the Vorcha assault troops, enough to stand his ground and blow his harassers away before being eliminated in turn. With the sharpshooters removed, a truck had burst through the barricade. That was all clear to her at a glance, but there was no more gunfire coming from up ahead. She couldn’t say when it had stopped, but it was probably a bad sign.

The vehicles’ engines were off so they were flush to the ground. If they’d been ground vehicles she could have looked in the gap left by tires to see what was happening on the other side, even crawled under them. As it was, she’d have to do this the hard way. She stuck her head into the gap left by the slaver’s assault. Blood and bodies were scattered on the ground, Human and Vorcha for the most part, but her troops had not gone easily. A second Krogan corpse lay atop the body of one of his victims, apparently having been ripped apart by half a dozen shotgun blasts. Shepard ignored all this, for she saw something more important, the remaining two mobile Vorcha holding a feebly struggling soldier in front of the last Krogan standing, and he was standing above the man, a massive Claymore shotgun held easily in one hand.

Shepard did not shout a threat, a warning, or a demand, instead she simply **charged** at the unshielded Vorcha, sending them flying away. One hit a nearby wall with a bone-breaking crack, the other was impaled on the broken spike that was all that was left of an aircar’s door.

But the shielded soldier and Krogan were only staggered. That was enough. Too much, in fact as the Krogan jerked the trigger and the weapon roared, spitting forth a massive array of projectiles which ripped through the Human’s shields, armor and flesh alike. The staggering effect of her **charge** had knocked the Krogan’s aim off, so instead of a headshot, the Claymore had essentially ripped the man’s right arm off. Dark arterial blood spurted and Shepard met the turning Krogan’s bellow of fury with a scream of her own. The injured man would not survive without medigel and with his arm practically ripped off, he couldn’t apply it to himself, even if he had any left.

She had to get past the Krogan first, but it shouldn’t be too bad, he was staggering and his weapon was overheating, due to the Claymore’s massive heat production. The pistol without the high explosive ammunition pressed into the Krogan’s throat and fired as fast as she could pull the trigger. She got off enough rounds to overheat the weapon, scorching and accidentally cauterizing many of the holes she’d put in the massive being’s throat. He recovered fast enough to drop the overheated Claymore and backhand her, the blow from the seven foot Krogan hit her high in the chest, sending her sprawling backwards and knocking the wind out of her despite her armor. The pistol slipped from a temporarily numb hand.

Despite a complete lack of oxygen in her lungs, she managed to pull her second pistol loose and fire before the Krogan managed to close. The high explosive round hit the shields she’d previously bypassed, knocking the Krogan on his ass as flames scorched skin and wounds, slowing his natural regeneration. The explosive force had damaged armor and internal organs alike, but the Krogan’s blood rage and redundant organs kept him moving, back onto his feet and rushing towards the, still-downed, vanguard. She dropped the pistol and rolled away, evading a stomp that would have broken ribs and armor alike. Shepard gasped desperately for air, hands rising to a traditional defensive posture, despite her desperate, shuddering breaths and the darkness that swirled around the edges of her vision. A massive overhand blow was easy enough to dodge, but it was just to drive her into the path of a follow-up kick that would have shattered her thigh if she hadn’t slid out of the way. She grabbed the kicking leg and tried to lift it and force the Krogan onto his back, but his massive weight dragged her down and forward instead, pulling her head into his armored belly.

A blow to her back knocked her flat on the ground and sent bolts of pain up and down her spine. She rolled away four times and snapped back to her feet, ignoring the screaming agony in her muscles. The Krogan didn’t bother retrieving any of the discarded weapons, instead he roared and charged again, trying to flatten her against a nearby wall. Despite Shepard’s superior speed, she was only a few steps away and there wasn’t enough room to get clear, so instead she forced herself to muster a **warp** and slammed it right into the Krogan’s face, not releasing it until her hand was past the man’s shielding.

The blood rage was strong in him. Too strong for a little thing like biotics ripping apart his face on an atomic level to cause him to stop, or even scream, but it did slow him down for an instant. Long enough for Shepard to drop and crawl through his legs. He turned slowly as a hand rose to wipe blood out of eyes and the blue biotics of the **warp** kept eating away at his face, fighting the Krogan’s regeneration. She scrambled desperately forward and managed to reach the Claymore shotgun the Krogan had dropped. A glance at the soldier confirmed that the blood had stopped flowing from the gaping wound in his armor. His heart had stopped, he must be dead. The arterial damage had been too severe and he’d bled to death while she’d been fighting the Krogan.

If she remembered correctly, the weapon had enough kickback to break her arm. Fortunately it would be hard to miss with this shotgun, at this range, so she hefted it with her left hand, while her right cradled the barrel. A quick step brought her close enough to the temporarily blinded Krogan to be sure of her aim, even using her non-dominant hand. The single shot she got ripped his hip-joint apart and knocked him to the ground. With the blood rage, he didn’t feel the pain, but that didn’t mean that he could rise with tendon, bone and muscle alike destroyed.

In turn the recoil shoved the weapon back against her left hand so hard that the armor protecting her forearm broke, fracturing her ulna and jarring the weapon loose from suddenly numb fingers. Shepard stepped away from the Krogan trying to drag itself towards her. An armored foot kicked the overheated weapon further away from the Krogan’s questing hands as she went to retrieve her own weapons.

The first pistol spat bullets until the Krogan’s shield whined and died, then she carefully put a high explosive round into his head, which promptly exploded in a shower of bone and brain matter. “Fuck you,” she whispered harshly. The fury her voice contained was mostly a front at this point, concealing growing despair. The damage to her arm was catastrophic, as it would be for any biotic. She’d be lucky if she was able to **charge**. Without the proper balance, the other biotic abilities were beyond her.

If she chose to use the medigel, it would numb the pain, but it wouldn’t heal the disrupted pathways that usually gave her her biotic abilities. That would have to heal naturally. This situation only grew worse. A thought which was confirmed by the sharp crack of gunfire from behind her. She paused long enough to put a round in the head of each of the Vorcha. The fact that they hadn’t risen to attack her yet probably meant they were dead, but with Vorcha, it was better safe than sorry.

As she sprinted back the way she’d come she realized that she was beginning to hate these streets. Halfway back she almost shot a civilian, who flinched back from the sight of her, tall and armored, one pistol back on her hip, the other in her, still-good, right hand. “Keep going, the way is clear” she bellowed as the crowd of civilians pouring out of the ship flowed back towards the town center and their fellows.

The shooting was coming from the other side of the transport and it wasn’t the deliberate shots of executions, or the constant fire of a massacre, but the intermittent sound of battle. The people she’d left behind had managed to get the belly ramp down about halfway and the civilians were climbing out, being helped down the meter drop by the people who’d preceded them out. Rather than interfere with the evacuation, she ducked down the same path she’d used to leave, grateful that she could see light at the end of the quasi-tunnel. She wasn’t claustrophobic, but the space was tight and unpleasant, though the pavement had cooled.

Shepard poked her helmeted head out and glanced around, taking in the situation at a glance. There was an impressively large hole in the back of the bulk transport, clearly ripped open by an equally impressive heavy weapon. Given the movement of other objects, it looked like one of the pirates had a Blackstorm, a black hole gun. Human body parts were scattered around the hole into the ship, but they had not died alone. Tracking the enemy bodies, it seemed clear that the raiders had launched an assault up into the ship as soon as the path was clear.

The assault was repulsed, though she saw at least twice as many unarmored bodies as she did armored ones. The civilians had paid a heavy price for their lack of armor, shields and training, but the numbers had been heavily in their favor. With the attack defeated, they’d moved out of the ship to prevent themselves from being bypassed and scattered into a rough firing line along the road. Most of them at least. More than she’d expected. The bodies further back, shot in the back were the ones who’d broken under fire, tossed their weapons aside, tried to run and been gunned down for it. She couldn’t blame them. She didn’t blame them. The girl back on Mindoir had blamed those who ran. But First Lieutenant Shepard knew better.

Two dozen of the civilians who hadn’t broken were still moving and shooting, facing down five Batarians. The odds weren’t too bad, except the Humans couldn’t take any fire at all without dying, while the armored and shielded Batarians could take a dozen hits before their shields failed. So they were simply trading shots from behind cover, as both sides waited for reinforcements. Too bad for the raiders, Systems Alliance reinforcements had arrived first.

So she’d need to draw their attention while forcing them into a position where the others could hit them. If she moved up to flank them, they’d have to move out into the line of fire of the civilians. There was a storefront by their firing line. Shepard sprinted forward and dove through the window, only a few rounds hit her shields, doing her no harm at all, unlike diving through the window, which hurt quite a lot when her fractured left arm hit the glass and then the floor.

It took two tries for her to get back up and begin spraying fire on the Batarians with her pistol. When they turned on her, trying to retreat to the building opposite to the one Shepard occupied, they got picked off by the civilians. Only two of them were left standing their own reinforcements arrived.

It would have been bad regardless of who they were, as Shepard was way out in front of her support, which consisted of civilians. Unfortunately for her, their reinforcements consisted of a Batarian vanguard. His two comrades sent enough covering fire at her to keep her pinned down while the vanguard ripped through her unarmored support. Shepard ducked along the wall, heading towards the other side of the building to try to take the Batarians from behind. She did her best to ignore the screams as the men and women she’d asked to fight died horribly against the Batarian biotic soldier, but if she tried to assist them without taking out the other Batarians, she’d be shredded.

The screaming stopped as Shepard ducked out the back of the building* and circled around to flank the Batarians. She glanced around the corner to see the vanguard approaching the spot where she had been hiding. He opened his mouth to warn his fellows when a dozen shots rang from behind him, shattering shields and peppering the surrounding area. Some of the other civilians had come up, grabbing weapons. Though they weren’t particularly good shots, a dozen people shooting automatic weapons with auto-aim assist could hit the target enough to break their shields.

_*Most buildings in the city were divided into two parts, with one opening up onto the horizontal road to the north, while the other opened up onto the horizontal road to the south. This was one of the few buildings where the wall blocking the two rooms from one another had been removed to create one larger storefront with two entrances. This explained the focus on the roads leading to the town square, though several teams had managed to infiltrate past the barricade early in the combat by blowing their way through the surrounding buildings, but the enemy appeared to have run out of heavy explosives. Mostly. Of course the other reason was that without the roads it was hard to get loot and slaves out in any reasonable time, or amount._

Shepard’s shot took the vanguard in his unarmored head, with the other Batarians diving into cover and returning fire at the civilians, taking three of them down before the others scattered into cover. Shepard raced forward, joining the Batarians in their cover as they’d forgotten her in the rush of being fired on. A few rounds bounced off her shields before she made it. A round to the back of the head killed the first Batarian before he even knew she was there. The second turned to face her in time to catch the bullet in the front of his head.

“CEASE FIRE.” She yelled.

They didn’t, instead continuing to fire desperately at the cover she was hiding behind. Shepard glanced back. No more were coming, yet, but if they did, she was in a very bad position.

“CEASE FUCKING FIRE!” It took three more bellowed commands before they stopped long enough for her to stick her head out and get them to accept that she was not a raider. It was then that half a dozen mortar rounds dropped on the civilian’s battle line. Shepard had heard the whine of the rounds and screamed at everyone to take cover, but none of the others had matched her instinct to dive for the ground. They were wiped out to the last.

The car Shepard was hiding behind flipped over, but absorbed most of the impact of the mortars. A snap roll took her under the suddenly flying vehicle. Her body screamed in protest as she forced herself to rise and sprint for the cover of the crashed ship. Its hull would protect her from the mortars the pirates were apparently carrying. Her body proclaimed its need for rest, for food, for time to dump stress and recover, but she was an N-School graduate. She was an N6. Exhaustion was an old friend.

While sprinting she tried to hurdle the body of a large Batarian (well, part of a body, much of it having been ripped apart by a nearby mortar hit), only to trip. An hour ago she would have rolled away gracefully. Now she landed flat on her face, started to push herself up and hissed as bolts of agony raced along her left arm. She rolled over and kicked the torso bad-temperedly. A look down and her ill-humor melted away. It was the Blackstorm. She retrieved the black hole gun and examined it as she moved more cautiously back to the ship.

The weapon had enough power for one more shot. She would just have to make it count.

She heard another barrage of mortar fire coming, a swift glance showed her that there was nothing nearby to hide behind, except the shattered corpses of those who had followed her into battle. So she went for speed, **charging** up into the ship where she saw what the weapon she now wore strapped to her back had done. A child’s hand lay by an old man’s head, shattered corpses of those who’d been killed when the pirates broke in and who were killed pushing them back out again. There was horror all around her, but her vision was failing, as was her body, the horror couldn’t touch her, not when she was so very far away from her own body.

The impact of the blast wave from the mortars behind her knocked her off her feet and back into her body. This time she remembered not to use her left arm as she got up and glanced around, taking in her surroundings. The cargo bay was at least two stories high, with room for significant amounts of cargo and a catwalk ran along the perimeter at the bay, though it had a large hole in the middle where the Blackstorm had opened up the cargo bay. There was only one way out, personnel access to the rest of the ship. The only ways up to the catwalk were a pair of ladders, one on either side of the bay.

“Shit. This is going to suck,” she whispered, but it didn’t stop her from moving to the ladder and climbing. It hurt like hell with a fractured forearm, but none of the three ways she tried to climb were any better, so instead she simply endured it, the way she had when she’d cracked two ribs early in one of the exercises at the Villa back in N-School. She would complete her mission. The Villa missions had been longer than this, but none had involved such constant combat and unrelenting use of her biotics, especially without sufficient nutrients.

That biotic usage was eating away at her body, consuming it to fuel the impossible things she had done and would continue to do. Climbing a ladder would not usually have made that list, but in her current state, it was pretty close. A staggering pace carried her to the edge of the hole the pirates had blown in the ship. Instinct and training had her seated so she could see out the hole, while keeping almost all of her hidden behind the twisted metal of the makeshift entrance.

A third round of mortar shells fell over the area, shattering cars, body armor and bodies alike, but doing no more than sending a shower of shrapnel against the thick hull of the bulk transport. It would take a lot more fire than that to breach the hull. It would take something like the heavy weapon Shepard awkwardly pulled from her back and cradled in her arms, ignoring the pain coming from her left. She waited.

The Batarians must have called for the mortar barrage before being wiped out. It was a little surprising to see mortars deployed on what was pretending to be a pirate raid though. They weren’t a very piratey weapon, as they weren’t generally sold to private companies. Of course, neither was the Blackstorm she was carrying. Maybe whoever was running these pirates was simply frustrated with their lack of progress and was pulling out all the stops. She smiled at that, “All this just for little old me? I’m flattered.” Then she remembered the bodies that surrounded her, and why it was _just_ for her and the smile vanished to be replaced by a bleak determination.

The fourth barrage contained far fewer rounds. Were they really going to empty their mortars on a single position? So it appeared, for the fifth barrage was unworthy of the title, consisting of a single round which landed atop the bulk transport, making a sound almost like raindrops on the roof back on Mindoir.

The enemy came on in a rush, seeking to overwhelm any survivors while their ears were still ringing from the artillery fire. Shepard’s smile returned at the mass of Batarians with a leavening of Humans, Turians, Vorcha and a single Krogan. A single shot would take them out, as soon as they stepped within range, damn the Blackstorm’s absurdly short range.

Still, all she’d have to do was wait for them to get closer and this would be easy. And, since the universe loves to prove people wrong, they stopped at the sight of the ship. The Krogan flattened a Batarian who bellowed commands for the rest of the group to advance. A wave sent a trio of Turians forward, they split up, one going towards the entrance to the ship, the other two heading down the make-shift tunnels on either side of the ship. Scouts. The Krogan was no fool, unfortunately.

Shepard ducked down and back, using the catwalk to shield herself. The Turian covered the angles with the practiced grace of an experienced soldier. Only the fact that Shepard was completely out of sight kept her from being seen. She waited in agony until she heard the Turian shout the all clear. Then she peaked around the edge of the catwalk. The Turian shouted a few good natured insults at the mob that was coming up. The responses were profane and anatomically improbable and were met with the Turian’s laughter. He spun away with a shouted joke about getting the good loot before the rest of them caught up.

The voices were loud enough, they should be close enough, but she couldn’t risk looking out. Instead she waited just a moment, for the Turian to be slightly off-balance as he stepped forward. It was time to **charge**. She did so. His shields held enough to keep him from being injured, but her **charge** knocked him forward, sending him sprawling face-first into the deck. Shepard spun even as a handful of the sharper pirates began to fire at her. The Blackstorm in her hands rose and spat its single remaining charge as the black ball flew into them. Several tried to flee, or take cover, but the gravity shift of the forming black hole yanked them back together, compacting the thirty or so raiders into a mass of writhing forms and unbending metal, before exploding in a welter of blood and limbs.

But Shepard saw none of that, having spun back towards the downed Turian, dropping the useless heavy weapon. The Turian rolled over, just in time to take an armored boot to the head as Shepard stomped hard on his unhelmeted head. Shepard was a big woman, with a soldier’s gene mods to strengthen and speed her and she was in full and heavy (in weight, it was still classed as medium) body armor. It still took three heavy stomps to break through the Turian’s tough skull and natural armor, but by the time the adrenaline that the **charge** had brought burnt out, the deck was painted with blue blood and purple brain matter.

Shepard stepped away, feet sticky with the dead man’s blood. Training and will forced her to the personnel hatch even though all she wanted to do was sit down. Or pass out. The other scouts would have turned back. If she was fast, she could circle around behind them and take them from behind.

She went out the same airlock she’d used before, in too much of a hurry to look first and went over atop the second Turian scout who’d chosen to try to sneak into the ship instead of rushing back towards the explosion. The rifle went sliding away and rather than reach for it, the Turian’s clawed hands sank into her throat, squeezing tight, claws sinking in, slowly forcing their way through the lighter flexible armor of her throat. Red blood stained his claw as her hand scrambled for a weapon, the pistol almost leapt into her hand and she fired into the Turian’s groin, focusing on the weaker armor of the joints.

The grip on her throat tightened cruelly, cutting off her breath as she kept firing. Finally arterial blood began to spurt just as black spots began to cover her vision. The raider’s grip weakened instantly and she was able to push herself to her knees, using the pistol as a brace.

The final scout appeared, blocking the light at the end of the tunnel, a strong figure with a Phaeston assault rifle pointed directly at her, his face was flexing in what her training said was an expression of absolute fury. He was screaming something about his brother, but she couldn’t make out the words, not through the certainty of what she had to do.

 **Charging** from a kneeling position was difficult and not terribly effective, as the speed was lower and the hit was lower, unlikely to flatten, especially a shielded Turian in a firing position. Indeed, he didn’t even stumble, as her gun fell from nerveless fingers. He did jerk the trigger, rounds spitting over her head as she was suddenly kneeling before the scout. That sound forced her hand to the second pistol, fingers barely working. The butt of the assault rifle hit her across the helmet smacking her back, making her head spin, but her gun continued to rise and fired upward into the Turian, right under the heavy chest armor.

The high explosive round exploded the instant it left the barrel of her gun, destroying it and flinging the two of them apart. Sharp pain sprang across her face. She would have screamed if she’d had the energy. Instead she whimpered, sprawled on the ground. There was no air, she aspirated blood, choking and twisting. It took an embarrassingly long time to realize that whatever had wounded her was blocking her nose. She could still breathe through her mouth, for all that she could taste more than a hint of blood.

Two minutes of breathing and trying to focus and she was able to look around. The gun had taken the brunt of the blast, mostly protecting her right hand. But the gun itself was trashed. It took four tries to force her hand to release the remnants pistol and then it could rise, shaking, to her face feeling for whatever was causing the horrible pain. It found a metal shard imbedded horizontally in her helmet. She ripped it free, the horrifying pain bringing her most of the way back to functional. Blood was flowing down her face, she could taste it and just a hint of smoke was starting to filter into her helmet through the new hole. It took her three tries to pop the seals on her helmet and rip it off.

She curled sideways, eyes watering at the smoke from the explosion, wincing at the mixed taste of Turian and Human blood as she gasped for air, no scent making it through the savage wound in her face and the blood spilling from her nose. Some part of her mind remembered that the dextro-amino nature of Turians made their blood and probably the smoke from their cooking corpses dangerous to Humans. There was nothing to do about that at the moment. The medi-gel wouldn’t discharge from her right hand, the dispenser must have been damaged. Her left arm came up slowly, painfully, but the pain vanished as the medi-gel slid from her hand over her face, into her system. Anesthetics burned away the pain and sealed the cut, binding her nose back together and locking it into place, then sliding along the rest of the wound, leaving a jagged line across her face from cheekbone to cheekbone, right over the bridge of her nose. She still couldn’t breathe through her nose, but the pain was gone, as were the little aches in her muscles. Exhaustion was an old friend by now, weakness was painful, but hardly new. She could get up. She would get up. She did get up.

Drying blood would block her nose in a moment, she scrambled around for something to blow it on, finally finding a length of cloth. Without looking too closely at where it had come from, she blew her nose and gratefully took a deep breath, then gagged at the overwhelming stench.

The helmet locked back into place. Comms were gone, so were most of the systems and it sure wasn’t airtight any longer, but it was better than nothing. After a moment’s thought she picked up the shard of metal and glanced at it. Stained with her heart’s blood, it was a piece of the Turian’s chest armor, blown out by the same round which had blown the slaver nearly in half, as she discovered when she stepped forward into his guts. After an interminable moment, she lifted the metal shard to her helmet and slid it back through the hole in her helmet, stopping well before it could possibly hit flesh. She wouldn’t be able to feel that, not with the medi-gel over her skin. The Turian’s assault rifle had called to her, still intact despite everything. Say what you will about the Hierarchy, but they made good, sturdy weapons. She only had one really functional hand, which made an assault rifle a bad choice, but she didn’t see any pistols. Her previous one had been knocked somewhere in the explosion, or the fight and she was in no condition to look for it.

She could go back to where the civilians were. Even slow as she was, she’d wiped out enough that she would have time to get back to the square before they could pursue her. But then there would be no one standing between the civilians and these slavers. No. Her decision had been made the moment she slid the metal through her faceplate. The climb back into the ship was hard, but no one interrupted her. Finding a spot which looked natural, offered cover and gave her a view of anyone coming down the street was hard, but she did it. Then she sat down to ‘rest’. She definitely wasn’t pretending to be dead in order to ambush any raiders who came along. That would be wrong, perfidious, arguably war crime, even if the Batarians weren’t signatories to the Geneva Convention and would have tortured, raped and enslaved everyone present.

She was simply resting. Perfectly reasonable for an exhausted soldier, even if she looked dead, with shrapnel sticking out of her helmet. A sea of body parts lay beneath her gaze as she waited for more enemies to come. It was…unfortunate that some of the civilians’ bodies had probably been vaporized and she didn’t know any of their names, or the names of the soldiers who’d died under her command.

For just a moment she wondered if anyone would know her name. Know what she’d done here, the good and the bad, the people she’d sacrificed and saved. It shouldn’t matter. It did.

Those thoughts were unproductive. She knew how to push them away, though the drugs in the medi-gel made it more difficult. But she got there in the end, the state of crystal attention where the real world was all that mattered. Shepard was a predator and the world was divided into prey and pack. Except there was nothing.

Then there was one, a Turian in pirate’s armor. He was prey. The fact that he moved like prey seemed odd to some part of her brain. A full burst from the Phaeston in the back and he went down. Rising wasn’t so bad, this time, not with rest and medi-gel, but dragging the slaver’s corpse away was relatively hard. She resumed her post and waited with the patience of the ultimate hunter.

This time the movement was not furtive, or small. A full squad was moving down the street, scouts in the lead, rearguard in place. Formation was Alliance standard, as were the uniforms. Shepard snapped back into her body, ripped the shrapnel out of her helmet though she didn’t drop it. Rather than stick her head out in front of troops in a combat situation, she undid her helmet (as its speakers were unfortunately damaged).

Her first attempt to speak failed, her mouth was too dry. She mustered enough saliva to lubricate her throat and bellowed out, “This is Lieutenant Shepard, commanding the marine contingent on the SSV _Trafalgar_. Identify yourselves.”*

_*Her IFF was disabled along with most armor systems, so she couldn’t be sure._

The squad had scattered into cover the instant she started to speak and a half dozen weapons were pointed in her direction while the rearguard prepared for an ambush. They’d spread out enough that if she’d still had the Blackstorm, whose existence was evidenced by the damage they were walking through, she couldn’t have taken them all out in one shot. “You aren’t showing up on our IFF, ‘Lieutenant.’ Come out slowly,” one of the figures yelled, probably the commander of the squad.

“I’m coming out. I’m unarmed,” Shepard let the Phaeston fall and stepped up and out, slowly in order not to trigger their reflexes and because she was very close to the edge.

She walked towards them slowly and everyone but the soldier who’d spoken fell back from the force of her personality and from concern that she might be a suicide bomber. A hand rubbed the grime off her N6 decal, drawing the eye to the insignia. “There were six frigate sized ships and one other transport like this one at the space-port. Have you locked them down?”

The officer’s eye roamed over her gaunt face, filled with too-bright eyes, the blood, guts and brains staining her armor, the crashed ship and the few human bodies which could be seen were all shot in the back (as the bodies of those who’d fought were either vaporized by the Blackstorm, or smashed into paste by the mortar barrage). When all that was combined with the N6 designation, it led to one obvious conclusion. This woman had shattered the enemy invasion all on her own. “I only saw three frigates when we came down, but let me check, Lieutenant,” he said, all air-quotes gone from voice and mind alike.

His external comms went dead as he reported in and asked about the ships. Shepard did not sit down. Or pass out. Or scratch at the hardening medi-gel across her face. Nor would she fart, or go in search of a bathroom. Her eyes focused and she glanced around. “Any of you got a biotic ration pack? Or any sort of ration pack?”

One of the soldiers, a woman, came forward with a biotic ration pack and offered it to Shepard. She wolfed down the pills and the drink, savoring the slight tingle of the energy drink on her tongue. That made her feel a bit more like herself. Finally the officer spoke again. “Command’s got our fleet spreading out to interdict any attempt by the other ships to escape. You’re wanted topside. We’re securing the city, but there may be stragglers, so I’m sending Jones and Lang to make sure you get there.”

“Understood,” she gave him a field salute, also known as a nod. Even with the energy from the food burning through body and brain alike, she lacked the will to dodge from cover to cover. Instead she strode down the center of the road as the soldiers dogged her steps.

The marines she’d left behind looked around the carnage and then continued on, only to find more and more carnage. They were especially impressed by the Krogan, obviously killed in close combat. Recordings were made and soldiers began to do one of the things they do best, gossip. By the time she’d reached the spaceport, her escort had started giving her more space and more respect. They began to ask questions about what she’d done and how many raiders she’d done it to. She deflected the questions because she didn’t want to talk about it. If she’d known that they would interpret that as heroic modesty rather than exhaustion, she’d have spoken up about the men and women who’d fought beside her, but she didn’t.

The shuttle pilot greeted her with an entirely inappropriate salute, which Shepard chose to return rather than discuss. He burbled something about it being an honor, but she was almost asleep on her feet and about thirty seconds after she strapped herself into her seat, she was asleep in the seat.

A medical team met them in the shuttle bay of the _SSV Einstein_. The carrier was acting as flagship of the relief fleet was sitting well away from the planet its fighters and bombers were now encircling the globe, hanging high above it, waiting for the missing ships to attempt to escape the gravity well. The medical team ran scanners over her body without Shepard rising, though some words faded through to her mind. “Fractured forearm, trauma to the face, trauma to the spine, two fractured ribs, massive dehydration and malnutrition…accessed her medical records, she lost a tenth of her body mass in the last day…get her out of that armor…” there was some slight tugging on her limbs, but no pain, then she felt slight movement. Her eyes opened and saw the ceiling flash by as the eezo powered stretcher moved her through the hallways of the warship easily. “I.V. in, running full out…” she didn’t even feel the pinch, that was worrisome, the motion stopped and she lay still, “the admiral wants to talk to her…”

Eyes opened automatically in response to that and without any intervention from her conscious mind, muscles moved to jerk her body to attention. There were three doctors in the room, two of them lunged forward, pressing her back down. They were Human wearing Systems Alliance uniforms, so her instincts did not drive her to attack them, yet.

“Stand down, Lieutenant,” the oldest and most senior of the doctor’s snapped in a tone which made it clear that she’d come up out of the enlisted ranks and had probably been a senior sergeant at some point. Like any good officer, Shepard reacted to the tone and stopped.

Dark eyes focused and she tried to speak, it came out a croak and the docs who’d piled on her pulled back and lifted a straw to her lips. A deep drink scoured the dust from her throat, “Where—“

“Medbay on the _Einstein_ , in orbit around Elysium,” the older doctor answered, in a calming voice which announced that it had done this a thousand times before and everything would be fine.

“Situat—“

“We won.”

Tension Shepard hadn’t been aware of began to drain out of her shoulders and back.

“How bad was it?”

The doctor shrugged but a voice from the door spoke up. “Civilian casualties in the tens of thousands, but we don’t think any were taken off world. Two survivors from the 13th Frontier Company, both in critical condition at Grissom Hospital downside. The rest of the garrison was wiped out in the original orbital bombardment of Fort Grissom. Fleet casualties were light, but the crew of the _SSV Tsushima_ and its marine contingent were almost completely wiped out and the ship had been pounded to scrap, but no other of our ships were lost,” Rear Admiral Kahoku said from the hatch.

Shepard’s eyes swept over the man, taking in caramel skin, his rank tab and the thin beard along his jawline. She straightened automatically, right hand rising for a parade salute, only to be jerked to a halt by the I.V. “Admiral—“

Her move to rise was stopped by a wave of his hand. “Stay where you are Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You did well downside. The way I hear it you stopped the raider advance and launched a one-woman rescue mission at the spaceport. If you hadn’t told us about those missing pirate ships, they might have been able to sneak off, and we’d definitely have lost a lot of people into the hands of the slaver scum.”

“I didn’t do that alone, sir.”

“Maybe not, but at the end of the mission, you were the last woman standing, which means the whole tontine of glory is yours, as well as buckets of survivor’s guilt.”

“Yes, sir,” Shepard said slightly bitter.

“And most crucially, it also means you need another mission and it’s not going to be going back to the _Trafalgar_. So, hero, where do you want to be sent next?”

Last time she’d been asked that, she’d just lead her team to the highest passage rate in N-School history. Then she’d told the truth and asked to be sent to Khar’Shan. That comment had dogged her earlier career, as someone in personnel had combined it with her history on Mindoir and come to the conclusion that she was a bigot and should be assigned far away from any aliens. If not for that business with the Asari Starliner, she’d still be assigned to backwaters.

Like the fact that she wanted to stab slavers in the face meant that she would leave some civilians twisting in the breeze because they happened to be blue. With her career back on track she couldn’t be flippant, but she’d thought a lot about what she should have said and was ready to answer. “Project Overwatch, sir, I want it.”

“Never heard of it, Lieutenant, but I’ll put in the request with Arcturus. Now, get some food and get some sleep, we’ll want you looking like a hero, not a warmed over corpse before letting the journos loose on you.”

Shepard groaned. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

## 2176 CE, District 197, Tayseri Ward, Citadel

Garrus Vakarian always ate his on-shift meal at the Good Eats Eatery. Not for its food, or its ambience and certainly not for its absolutely false and unnecessarily redundant name. No, he ate there because it was the very worst dive in the very nasty part of Tayseri ward he’d been assigned as his beat when he joined C-Sec’s Enforcement Division. When he’d talked his boss out of assigning him to babysitting duty on the Presidium with the rest of the new baby recruits, he should have known that Asari would give him the hardest district around to teach him a lesson. He’d learned quite a lot in the district, but probably not what she was trying to teach him.

On his first day he’d passed by the Eatery when a very distraught Drell was ambushed by a couple of leg-breakers for the local loan shark. After breaking the leg-breakers legs and delivering the Drell to the Investigations division officer who was looking into the loan shark, he’d taken up eating at the Eatery every shift. The first day someone had tried to bludgeon him to death so they could roll him for his armor and gear. After transporting his attacker to the prison hospital, no one else tried to attack him, though he did survive two different poisoning attempts.

After that, the Eatery became the safest place to eat in the District. At least, so long as all you wanted to do was eat. But he was not, in fact here to eat today. He was here to watch other people eat.

Finally he spotted what he was looking for. A wave of his hand and the tired Asari maiden who acted as the server came over, bearing the to-go meal he’d ordered. His omni-tool scanned the meal, to confirm it was unpoisoned. It was. Garrus moved out, transferring the appropriate credits to the Eatery. They offered him free meals, because they were certain he wouldn’t take them up on it. And he didn’t.

The Turian jumped three feet in the air when Garrus hand came down on his shoulder. He spun, reaching for what would certainly prove to be a weapon, which would force Garrus to arrest him. Since the C-Sec officer didn’t want to do that, he caught the man’s hand. “Relax,” he commanded, voice calm.

“I didn’t do it!” The Turian paused and cocked his head. “Whatever ‘it’ is!”

“I’m sure you didn’t. I’m offering a trade. That ration kit you just purchased, for this wonderful meal from the Eatery in there.”

“What’s the catch?” The meal was at least three times the price of the ration pack, and contained the same number of calories.

“Nothing that you need to worry about.” Garrus grinned nastily at the Volus who’d just sold the ration pack.

“Sure,” he shrugged and passed it over. Garrus released the meal into the man’s hand instantly.

The Volus was shaking slightly, but knew better than to try and run. His usual security was a hefty Human, but she hadn’t been paid enough to defend the Volus from Garrus. “Well, well, well,” he lifted the ration pack up and ran his omni-tool over it. “What do you know? This is one of the ration packs that was lifted in that warehouse robbery last week.”

The warehouse robbery which Investigation Division hadn’t cared about because neither the warehouse owner nor the owner of the underlying goods had cared. Garrus hadn’t much cared either, but he’d heard about it around the station. Some of the other Enforcement Division folks were joking about thieves so stupid they stole contaminated ration packs. Most of the jokes were to the effect that this was a crime that would solve itself when the thieves sampled their merchandise.

When the dead Quarian had dropped right in front of him while he was on patrol, only Garrus’s presence had prevented the locals from looting her corpse before it was even cold. He’d had to use Kolla to get an autopsy done. Everyone avoided her if they could because the Asari was disturbingly interested in corpses, but it meant that she was willing to work on a Quarian’s body, just to see one and didn’t give him the speech all the other doctors had. If he’d heard one more explanation about how Quarians were fragile and this one must have died from an infection, he might have either screamed or punched someone. So he was stuck with Kolla.

Fortunately, even if she did do things like coo over the shape of the dead woman’s jawline, she was also a skilled physician and discovered the Quarian had died because her food had been contaminated. When far from the Migrant Fleet, Quarians generally subsisted on Turian food, blended into a paste then passed through filters to kill any potential diseases. Their suits would also automatically scan for contaminants, which made her death quite surprising, until he remembered the story of the warehouse robbery and the contaminated ration packs which had made it through initial screening, but a final quality check had detected the problem.

His superiors had not cared about a dead Quarian and though there must have been other bodies, he wasn’t able to find them. Bodies disappeared in the District, recycled, sold, or used in some even more unsavory manner. So he’d back-traced the woman as best he could. The last place he could find her buying food was a stand outside the Eatery where the owner sold cheap food to those who couldn’t afford even the Eatery’s cut-rate fare. But when he’d gone looking, they hadn’t had anything that looked like a Turian ration pack, or like it might have come out of one. So he kept an eye on the place, hanging around a bit more than usual and finally he’d watched the Volus running the place pull out a ration pack from his stores, rather than the standard boxed food.

“I did not *HSCK* know that, Palaven-Clan.”

“Well then, Mal Pofor, you should have no reason not to tell me where you got them.”

“I do not *HSCK* rec—“

Garrus dropped a pseudo-friendly hand on the small woman’s shoulder, “Before you say anything else, I should point out that the extent to which I’ll believe you that you didn’t know there was anything wrong with this product,” he waved the ration pack around, “which you kept hidden under your stand and only sold to transients who wouldn’t be missed, will depend entirely on how much you help me find out where this came from.”

“Earth-clan!” Pofor bellowed (or came as close to bellowing as she could manage).

Her guard looked at Garrus and shrugged. “Sorry Mal, you don’t pay me enough to get the stuffing kicked out of me by this bruiser.”

Garrus interrupted the Volus’s shrieking about the perfidious Earth-Clan’s dishonorable breach of contract by asking, “Stuffing?”

“English expression. It refers to…you know, I don’t know what it refers to.”

“Weird,” he shrugged slightly and turned back to the Volus. “Anyway, tell me where you got the ration packs, or I’ll run you in for manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.”

The Volus considered who he was more afraid of and concluded that he was more afraid of the one who was present and gave up the address to a storage facility about a kilometer away.

“Good. Now go down to the station and swear out a statement.”

“You never *HSCK* said anything about—“

“I’ll be back at the end of my shift to process whatever I find at that address. I’ll need a sworn statement explaining how I knew where to go, or whoever I find at this C-Storage facility, might walk.* You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

_*The mere fact that the person providing the tip didn’t provide a statement would not prevent a prosecution from going forward. Garrus just likes to cover his bases. Even though that’s an expression he would not have gotten as he had no interest in baseball, a sport which had suffered significantly from the resurgence of football following the recruitment of Krogan to play the game, as they suffered none of the head trauma which had made the game a minor sport for the decades before First Contact. Well, actually, they suffered even more head trauma, it simply didn’t have the same lasting effect._

After considering what thieves he’d betrayed to C-Sec would do to him when they got out, the Volus tripped over himself to head down to the station and took his bodyguard, who gave Garrus a wide berth and a respectful nod. The Turian ran a hand over the butt of his assault rifle. In the close quarters of the District, using the sniper rifle was always a bit tricky. He’d trained with pistols, submachine guns and shotguns as well, but for situations which called for more than a single shot he preferred the accuracy of the Phaeston assault rifle.

The walk down to the storage facility was quick and quiet. It was at times like this that he wished he’d been assigned a partner. Unfortunately, his District was significantly understaffed and the captain had taken a look at him and concluded that he was more capable of operating independently than the set of pensioners, walking wounded, incompetents, drunks and drug addicts who were assigned to this, the worst District on the Citadel.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like he needed help to deal with a few thieves and the other officers in the Enforcement Division hadn’t proven particularly motivated, or impressive. A Krogan got in his way, so drunk he could barely stand and bellowed something about the genophage and dead children. Garrus ignored him, which, of course, provoked the man into launching a powerful uppercut.

Garrus stepped sharply backwards and the drunk Krogan fell onto his ass from the force of his own blow and then fell onto his back under the force of some truly vile Krogan liquors. The C-Sec officer stepped over him without bothering to either arrest him, or protect him from the vultures who were already circling, looking greedily at the unconscious Krogan’s omni-tool, clothes and jewelry. After three steps he heard rustling behind him and his conscience made him speak, without turning around and seeing something that would make him act. “If that clumsy fucker is injured in any way, I will have to find out who did that. That’s a process no one will enjoy,” he let a cruel humor slide into the subharmonics of the bark of laughter he emitted, and the words that followed. “Actually, I would enjoy it, but I’d be alone in that.”

Silence greeted that statement and Garrus strode on as if nothing had happened. Playing the incorruptible hard-case wasn’t so hard, and if it got a bit lonely, well, that was what off-duty time was for, when he was safely out of Tayseri Ward. His father didn’t much approve of the way he was handling things, but since their conversations tended towards platitudes and complaints that Garrus was in Enforcement Division, not the more prestigious Investigations Division, he wasn’t inclined to give his father’s complaints all that much weight.

Garrus wanted to be Special Response Division, the officers who went in when all the grey had been washed out of a situation, leaving only black and white. Rescue the hostage, defuse the bomb, kill the bank robbers, none of this poor people doing shitty things just to survive nonsense. But this case shouldn’t have any of that. Mal Pofor might have been ignorant, or he might not, but the folks who’d stolen tainted food and were selling it to the desperate, they deserved everything that was about to happen to them. He slid into the C-Storage yard without setting off alarms, or asking questions. The receptionist would undoubtedly be under orders to delay him and warn the customers that C-Sec was on the premises and he saw no reason to get the poor Volus at the front desk in trouble by intimidating him into not warning the criminals.

C-Storage wasn’t all that big, but it was cheap, which was a pretty neat trick on the tightly packed Citadel. They managed it by building up. Way up. The whole thing looked unsafe to him, especially the elevator he called to take him to the right storage unit, but it had passed its inspections. The elevator creaked and Garrus wondered who’d been bribed to make that happen. The elevator stopped at the right storage unit and Garrus flashed his omni-tool over the lock. It read his credentials and obediently opened, like all locks on the station would for a C-Sec omni-tool.

As the door opened, he drew the assault rifle and announced very, very loudly, “C-Sec, I’m armed and I’m coming in. If you shoot at me, I will arrest you.”

There were three of them, standing there, frozen as the door opened, two Turians and an Asari, all were probably armed with the hold-out pistols common among the criminal element on the Citadel, but they didn’t have any shields or armor, so the only thing to worry about was the Asari’s biotics. For a moment he worried he’d been lied to and he’d just busted into someone’s home. People did live in the C-Storage units, if they couldn’t live anywhere else.* Then he took his eyes off the desperate people for a moment and looked around the room, anxiety melting into smugness. The Volus had told him the truth and these were not exactly master criminals. He could see the boxed of ration-packs, still in the boxes they’d been stolen in.

_*In fact, in a rather famous incident, twenty two people crashing in a C-Storage unit in another District had died when they’d been locked in by the man renting them the unit as a flophouse as part of an attempt to cover up their presence. He hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about it while he was being held for questioning on other charges, or for the week he spent in custody._

“Up against the wall,” he ordered.

“What’d we do?” asked one of the Turians with no real hope of weaseling out of responsibility, but figuring it was worth a shot.

As they were moving obediently to the wall, Garrus decided to answer the question. “Let’s start with possession of stolen property and we’ll work our way up from there, shall we? Hands on the wall.”

Their hands rose and the Asari tried bluster, “You can’t just bust in here like this!”

“Actually I can. C-Storage has agreed to grant C-Sec access to all units at will.* It was in your lease. You did read your lease, right?”

_*This was true, and a result of the above incident and the horrific press which resulted from it, with C-Sec evading responsibility by asserting that the reason for the harm was the amount of time it took to get warrants for each storage unit._

Garrus activated his comms with a jerk of his head. “Station, this is Officer Garrus. I’ve located stolen property and have three for arrest. Transmitting location now.”

“Patrol air-car inbound. They’ll be with you in twenty minutes.”

“Wonderful,” Garrus slid his assault rifle back onto his armor and pulled out the cuffs and approached the criminals. After an imperceptible moment of hesitation, he went to the Asari first. She was by far the most dangerous, but not with her hands cuffed behind her back. As he’d half expected, she spun, biotics flaring to life as she tried to hit him in the chest with a **throw**. He dodged, caught her arm and directed the blast out of the open door, where it impacted the elevator. The guard-bar proved sturdier than he’d expected. The support structure did not. There was just time to scream a warning as the elevator fell with a shriek of grinding metal.

The other Turians stopped and stared in dismay at the destruction of their escape route and Garrus seized the distraction to use his grip on the Asari’s wrist to force her to the ground and cuff her hands behind her back. When the other Turians turned back to fact him, the assault rifle was in his hands. A minute later, they were both cuffed together and Garrus had reported in, again, leaving him free to explore the claustrophobic and barely lit storage unit. The crates were stacked like a maze, giving him a path to walk through. He wondered why. It wasn’t like there was anything in here that they needed access too. Why not just fill it back to front?

That was a question that was answered when Garrus almost tripped over a chair into a surprisingly impressive computing and communications setup. He tried to activate it and it requested a password. After a moment’s thought, he tried ‘password’ and was amused to discover that it unlocked the system. Whoever’d set it up was a competent engineer, but their users were incompetent and so the system was vulnerable.

A flash download would let him examine their files while watching over the prisoners. Upon returning he discovered that the idiots had tried to free themselves from their cuffs and had accidentally managed to roll themselves into the door he’d closed before beginning his investigation, for which they should be grateful, as if he hadn’t done so, they’d have plunged to their deaths, with the elevator removed.

They were not grateful. Indeed, the Asari was swearing at him in a language his translator didn’t recognize, which was unusual, C-Sec paid for the good translator programs.* His concern that it might indicate she was part of some unknown group of super-criminals was eased somewhat as he read through their files. These were not super-criminals.

_*He would later discover it was one of the dead languages the Asari had spoken before space travel, which the woman had learned as a child. It wasn’t included in the translator program to save space, as it was a dead language._

The trip back to the station was pleasant enough as he waited for the second car so he could avoid having to ride with the criminals. The pleasantness dissipated rapidly when he made it to the station. The other officers were most definitively and tellingly _not_ looking at him. The only one to look at him was the Volus and his bodyguard, though their clear amusement was…worrisome.

“Captain wants to see you,” Officer Lishus said, his mandibles flexing in a way which signaled to a fellow Turian that their joint commanding officer was very, very pissed. It was a face the officer made a lot, given his assignment as Captain Kilsh’s aide.

The captain’s dark blue armor had matched his skin color when he first joined C-Sec, but over his long years of service, the Salarian’s skin had weathered to a far lighter blue. Garrus almost tripped over his own feet when he saw the broad grin on the Salarian’s face. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d seen the captain smiling and, with the exception of having a dozen of his tiny nephews visit the captain, his smiles had never been good news.

“Officer Garrus, congratulations on your excellent work finding these vicious criminals.”

“Thank you sir,” Garrus raised a hand and sent the data he’d downloaded from their communications system to the station computer. “There’s more. They stole the stuff after being hired by the owner who was trying to offload the stuff since his original client refused payment since the food was contaminated. One of the workers at the warehouse was the middleman.”

“How do you know that?” Kilsh asked, jolted off-script by this surprising news.

“They were blackmailing her and so made recordings of her hiring them. And of them blackmailing her, because they’re idiots,” Garrus concluded, falling back into a perfect parade rest.

The captain’s smile broadened. “Even better. You’ve done so well that I’ve been able to get approval for a promotion.” Garrus flinched, absolutely certain this wasn’t going to go well. “There’s an opening in the Investigation Division, up in District 3. Congratulations, Officer.” He came out from around the desk and extended a hand to Garrus.

“Sir, I—“

“And don’t worry about a thing, I’ll take care of the damages caused by your unauthorized and unassisted invasion of a C-Storage facility and I’ll make absolutely sure that everyone in the station knows that _you were right_ about the death of that suit rat.”

Garrus’s hands flexed together, claws sliding against his armor. For a moment he was tempted to call the captain’s bluff. He hadn’t done anything wrong and the C-Sec counsel’s office would handle C-Storage and wasn’t likely to go along with the captain’s desire to see Garrus gone. The more serious threat was to announce to everyone that he’d been right and everyone else had been wrong. It didn’t matter that he’d never bring it up, or say I told you so. They’d know that he’d been right and they’d been willing to let a killer go rather than put in the effort to find him.

Being unpopular was fine, being despised would be a problem. And that was just from his comrades-in-arms, there were a few hundred ways that a creative CO could torture him. From the look on Kilsh’s face, he knew it and was looking forward to showing the upstart young officer what could be done. No, it was better to go and try again in a new district. The only problem was that he didn’t want to be Investigation Division. He wanted to be Special Response Division and they did almost all their recruiting from Enforcement Division. Going from Enforcement Division to Investigation Division wasn’t actually a promotion, but it was a prestige bump, going the reverse direction was career suicide, an announcement that you couldn’t handle the additional work.

“Sir, I really don’t feel I deserve a promotion for just doing my job. If District 3 needs some new blood, I’m happy to move out, but I wouldn’t want to blunt anyone’s talons by leaping the queue.”

“The paperwork’s already gone through. I was sure you’d take it. After all,” his grin was wide and horribly false, “it’s almost a family tradition, isn’t it?”

“Without my signature?”

“For a promotion? Personnel accepted a verbal approval.”

Garrus’s mandibles flared in fury, but fighting this would only look petty. “Thank you, sir,” he said, though his voice’s subharmonics screamed barely concealed threats of murder.

* * *

## 2176 CE, Pragia

The boy was small. She’d gotten bigger, but so few of her opponents had. It was…annoying. She wanted to learn to kill the Dalmatians,* butchers and monsters alike. They were all larger than her. Therefore, she needed larger enemies in order to practice properly. After the punishment her first escape attempt had brought, she knew her second had to succeed. Her higher brain functions wouldn’t survive a second punishment. They’d told her that. She’d just be a VI in a meatsuit. So she would wait and watch and prepare.

_*After they’d decided she was special and separated her from the others, they provided various forms of entertainment and interaction in an attempt to keep her sane in what amounted to solitary confinement and under constant torture and threat of torture. The 101 Dalmatians was one of the movies they provided as direct interaction was considered too dangerous. She had hated that movie, wanting the black and white dogs to suffer, just as the white and black clad monsters made her suffer. After her first escape attempt, the psychologist who’d suggested that was removed, as was anything that might distract her._

Usually she would draw out the match in order to enjoy the wonderful warmth which flowed from combat, but this wasn’t combat and there was little warmth from butchering a boy half her size as his biotics didn’t even phase her barrier. This was pointless and boring. She didn’t even consider not killing him. Why would she? He was a traitor, just like the rest of them, ignoring her until it was time to try to kill her, but she did delay, waiting for the shock. The flare of pleasure and warmth the drugs brought when she was in combat hadn’t arrived, because this wasn’t combat, it was an execution, but she had an idea.

“Attack, Subject Zero,” the voice of the head monster commanded over the loudspeaker system.

In a moment he would activate her implant and shock her for not attacking. That was what she was waiting for, and used the moment to focus, not on bringing up her biotics, but on that nameless, faceless voice, which had stolen her name and subjected her to a decade of torture and murder. Hate bubbled under her skin and eyes, rolling along her skin like the biotics would in a moment.

The shock came, but it was subsumed in the warmth brought by the drugs, just a tingle at the back of her tongue, but she flinched like it still hurt and obediently crushed the boy’s skull with a single **throw**. The other children fled the sight. Cowards.

“Subject Zero, it’s time for endurance tests. Go down the hall to the main testing area.”

Jack obeyed. She didn’t smile. They would see that and try to pry the secret of what she had to smile about from her. Soon, soon, they would know.


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, all standard disclaimers. Also, I’m well aware that the calculation Avon gives in the third part of this chapter for how long it would take their enemy to search the galaxy is clearly insane, but that’s because I couldn’t make the numbers work out. Even taking the smallest estimate of a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, and my own numbers for the Reapers, it came out to more than a hundred thousand years to search every system, even if it each system took only a single day. I choose to believe that they’re searching only those systems which show signs of life capable of interstellar travel, which their rear-guard identifies over the course of the cycle. Avon is simply referring to habitable systems of which the Federation is aware.
> 
> The alternative explanation, that the Reapers are far more numerous than my numbers (I’m unaware of any canon numbers besides enough to defeat the unified forces of the galaxy, which wouldn’t be too many given the relatively small number of warships and the great individual power of the Reapers) doesn’t make much sense to me, as they could simply overrun the galaxy by attacking everywhere at once, preventing basically all of Mass Effect 3 from happening.
> 
> There were some reviews over on fanfiction.net. A question was asked as to why we’re spending so much time in the Mass Effect universe before the start of Mass Effect 1. The answer to that is that I’m making some changes to canon after Elysium. There is, eventually, going to be an explanation (well, the outline of an explanation) for that, but mostly its because I have a hard time with Shepard saving Elysium, then spending the next seven years waiting around to be named a Spectre. Moreover, it also will help resolve two other things which work in video games, but not in written fiction. The first is the ability to take your time as the universe doesn’t act until you arrive. The second is more complicated and I’ll explain more when we get there.

## 253.16 NC – The _Liberator_ , the Fortress System

“Seriously?” Avon had had a lot of practice with sarcasm over the last two years of Blake’s crusade and he put every bit of it into the single word.

“We all need to work together, Servalan will see that. She’s a sociopath, but she’s not suicidal,” Blake argued.

“Well, let’s not give her a chance to double-cross us. We can do what needs to be done without having her at our back, or surrounding us.”

“We have to talk with her and her communication system is entirely distinct from anything Orac can get into, right?”

Orac didn’t bother to answer that. Mostly because he didn’t care, but also because his key wasn’t in, which made it even clearer that he was asking the question for effect. They all knew the answer to that question.

“We can fabricate a probe, or satellite to act as a relay, while keeping ourselves out of range.”

“How long would that take?” Say what you will about Blake, he would actually listen to a better idea if it came along. And if it accomplished the same goal as efficiently. And if he wasn’t on one of his self-sacrifice kicks.

“No more than an hour.”

“We don’t have that kind of time—we don’t _know_ we have that kind of time. The enemy could be here any time,” Blake argued.

“Which will not matter if Servalan decides to remove us as a complication.” Avon argued.

“She’s not that stupid.”

“I find it best never to underestimate the stupidity of people. Especially proud, powerful people who’ve just been publicly embarrassed. For instance, the Supreme Commander of the Federation who’s just gotten chased off, her and her whole fleet.”

“Only half her fleet,” Jenna interjected.

Avon’s gaze was acid on her skin, but she didn’t flinch. It didn’t do to flinch in front of other people.

“Zen, do you have enough information to extrapolate how long it will take the enemy fleet to arrive here?” Cally asked.

“Negative,” the A.I. responded tonelessly.

Avon produced Orac’s key and repeated the question to the more advanced A.I. “There is insufficient information. We do not know where the alien vessel was coming from before it arrived at Star One, nor how long it was in transit. According to the computers I have access to, the vessels simply appeared in the Monolith system. This lacunae in my knowledge is unacceptable. You must acquire an understanding of how their computer systems work so I can access them properly.”

“So they could arrive at any time?” Vila asked.

“No, you fool, it means they can arrive no sooner than their engines will permit. We simply lack the data to know when that will be! Which is exactly what is infuriating about this situation!” the A.I.’s fury far exceeded the grumpy old man personality he’d inherited from his creator.

“But we cannot predict when they will arrive?” Cally pushed.

“That’s what insufficient information means! And why you must gather additional information—“ Avon removed the key before he could continue his rant.

“I prefer the possibility of communicating with the Federation too late to the certainty of placing ourselves within her power,” Avon argued.

“So do I! And besides, if the situation is so bad they can’t wait an hour, than what good would our presence be?” Vila asked.

“Unusual though it may be, Vila raises a good point. If the enemy can deal with six hundred ships. Six hundred and one won’t be a problem, even if the _Liberator_ is the one,” Avon agreed.

“We can’t just stand by and do nothing!” Blake argued.

“And even a single extra soldier can tip the balance in some battles,” Cally pointed out.

“When the forces are even, perhaps. Not when one side is outweighed by at least three-to-one.” Avon countered.

“Not if complete destruction of the enemy was our goal, but in this instance it shouldn’t be. We’ll bleed them here while preserving our own space forces as best we can, then withdraw. Rendezvous with the other Federation fleets, secure shipyards and other resources. The trip between galaxies can’t be easy. In any protracted campaign, we have the advantage of far shorter supply lines. We can replace every ship we lose, if we have the time.” Blake said in his bleakest, damn-the-plasma-bolts tone.

“Except for the _Liberator_ ,” Jenna said.

“What?” Blake asked.

“We can’t replace the _Liberator_ ,” Jenna pointed out.

None of them mentioned that that was only true so long as they kept the workings of the ship secret from the Federation. They’d spent years alternately fighting and hiding from the Federation and only the _Liberator_ ’s unique capabilities had given them a chance. Giving up that advantage would mean the end of their dream. And their lives.

Avon recovered first, unsurprisingly. “Indeed. So every ship is expendable except ours. I’m so glad that the rest of you are finally starting to come around to my way of thinking.”

The glares that comment drew were fiery, but Avon merely smirked at them, warmed by their regard.

“So you agree to go in now?” Cally asked before Blake could respond.

“So long as we all,” his dark eyes flickered over each of the crew, “understand that this ship is not expendable. And neither am I.”

“None of us are expendable,” Blake responded.

“Oh, I think Gan proved that’s not true.”

“Lower the detector shield and take us into real time communications range,” Cally interjected before they could start to argue.

“Speed?” Zen asked.

“Standard. Let’s go in nice and slow so they can see us coming. Don’t want to spook anyone and I’m guessing there’s a lot of jumpy crew over there,” Jenna said.

“Confirmed.”

The trip was slow, especially as the Federation was unwilling to wait until they were in range to begin giving them commands. The STL communications left them with long gaps in the conversation, which made it almost impossible to have with any sense, but at least they were able to explain that they would not be surrounded, but they would help. Servalan was arrogant about it, but she didn’t disagree with their terms. Secure in her power, granting them some of their demands (which she reframed as requests) did not concern her.

It was all going so swimmingly that Vila was absolutely certain that something was going to go wrong. He said so.

“You always think something’s going to go wrong,” Cally pointed out.

“Something always does go wrong!” Vila argued.

There was a moment while everyone tried to come up with a response to that which didn’t consist of simply admitting he was right.

“We’re still here though,” Blake pointed out.

Neither Avon, nor Vila made the obvious response to that. Gan’s death was an open wound for Blake and pushing too hard on it would provoke an unfortunate reaction. Instead Avon simply pointed out that the Federation was still there too.

It was as they approached real time communications range, just at the edge of weapons range, that the universe proved Vila right.

* * *

## 253.16 NC – Command Ship _FNS Unity_ , the Fortress System

“Supreme Commander, sensors detect enemy ships entering the system. Four distinct fleets, each cored by approximately a hundred of the enemy capital ships!” the lieutenant operating the detectors was almost panicking, but he managed to speak clearly to Servalan. Whatever the dangers that surrounded him, he knew that the most dangerous person in the Federation was only a meter away.

“Extrapolate current position,” Admiral Lana snapped and the computers instantly projected the location of the enemy ships. They were all converging on the planet and the fleet orbiting it. “They must have lost most of their smaller vessels, each fleet only has as many escort ships as capital ships.”

“Here,” Pel tapped one of the fleets. “We can engage this fleet and keep the planet between us and the other fleets. Destroy them and make a break for it.”

“You want us to engage a fleet of two hundred of these monstrous ships?” One of the other officers asked dubiously.

“The fleet we defeated on the way out of the system outweighed this one,” Admiral Lana countered.

“Defeated is a generous interpretation of our escape from the Monolith System,” a sardonic voice from the throng countered.

“Supreme Commander, communications coming from Pandora, Hathet* and Jain Alpha, enemy ships have appeared and begun landing troops. Only a small number of ships at each, and mostly troop transports.”

_*Pandora’s and Hathet’s communications were coming through the comm relays at the command center on Kiros Gamma, one of the few command centers with FTL comm links set up._

Admiral Lana began to swear, pulling up a map of the Federation. Those were three major industrialized worlds, each with large shipyards. More disturbingly, they were widely scattered, varying distances from the Monolith system. How the enemy could have reached them all so fast was…unclear and terrifying. Even worse was the question of what other targets without FTL comms they might be hitting without their knowledge. The officers at those backwater worlds would not yet have warning, or know to activate the Omega protocol rather than surrender.

“Enough. Get all ships ready to move out and ensure the ground facilities and satellites are at maximum alert status,” Servalan ordered.

“Yes, Supreme Commander.”

“Now, I want a plan to get the fleet out of here.”

Lana and Pel exchanged looks. “The four fleets aren’t coming in that fast. Their speed is superior. They’ll be able to cut us off if we just make a run for it,” Lana stated.

“Indeed. Which is why I suggested engaging one. Not a long engagement. Let them build up some speed—“

“Then do a full burn straight at them, pass by at close range for only the briefest of moments. Their superior range won’t matter then and they don’t seem to have much in the way of rearward facing weaponry,” the admiral concluded the psychostrategist’s plan.

“Do it. Until we’re ready to begin, make it look like we’re trying to hide behind the satellite defense system,” Servalan ordered.

“Yes, Supreme Commander, but this plan does have a flaw,” the admiral admitted unhappily.

“Which is?”

“We’ll have to hit them all as a single unit. I’ll need to do the math to confirm, but I don’t think the battleships have the thrust to keep up.”

“Find me a solution,” Servalan said, waving the problem away as she dispatched orders to the other fleets. They would all rendezvous at Saurian Major. All of the fleets of the galaxy. She rose gracefully and swayed into her office. That would be the final battle, at least if this failed.

She activated a private comms relay and began broadcasting to the enemy in all known languages. Threats, demands, entreaties, warnings. There was no response.

Finally she returned to the flight deck. “Supreme Commander, the best we can come up with is to have the battleships take this vector,” Lana highlighted a line of advance. “That way this fleet,” she highlighted the one they planned to engage, “will have to choose which group to engage.”

“Fine. Has anyone told Blake what we’re planning?”

They stared at her like she’d grown a second head. “Must I do everything myself? Get the wretched man on the comms.”

It was the work of moments to bring the rebels up to speed on the plan. Blake was predictably self-righteous. “So you’re sacrificing half your fleet to escape? What would the President say to see his gallant forces so reduced?”

“Ah, oh no, why didn’t I believe you, Supreme Commander? Why, oh, why did I force you to have me killed?” Servalan’s mockery of the dead man’s famous intonation pattern was sharp and precise, silencing the rebel, partly because he didn’t expect jokes from her, mostly because the content made it clear it wasn’t a joke.

“We’ll accompany the lighter fleet elements,” Avon put in while Blake was distracted.

“No, you’ll accompany me and the battleships. The one thing we cannot lose is this ship and its FTL comms system. If we lose that, we lose all ability to coordinate our forces.” Servalan’s eyes ran over the feeds coming in from the attacked worlds. The shipyards had been blown to bits already and the enemy was landing forces in the main cities. Already Pandora was nothing but dust and ash. The commander there had realized that the enemies’ ability to convert humanity into their own forces indicated a weakness in numbers. The brutal man had detonated the fusion plants within the archologies of three of the main industrial zones where the enemy troopships had landed, after abandoning them, pulling out his own troops and as many of the important civilians as he could manage. With their numbers reduced, the remnants of the enemy ground troops had launched a pointless ground assault his forces had easily repulsed. He’d been announcing victory when the enemy ships in orbit had decided to resolve the problem by simply bombarding every city, town and hamlet to dust. The planet was uninhabited by the time Servalan had broken orbit. On the other two worlds, the campaign was proceeding more normally.

“Where are we going?” Blake asked, not disputing her position, which brought a smile to her pale, beautiful face.

“Saurian Major,” Servalan stated.

“Meeting up with the other fleets? Well, at least as long as these monsters are chasing us they aren’t attacking anyone else.”

“You think?” Servalan pushed a button and sent them what she had on the enemy’s movements.

“What are they doing?” Blake asked, face gone white at the sight of the invasion forces.

“Killing everyone. So let’s get to Saurian Major and stop them,” Servalan’s voice shook with unfelt emotion. That was what would motivate Blake and his idealists. Vila was beneath her notice and Avon was already as motivated as he got because this was a threat to his survival. “Understand this. They don’t want to conquer us. They want to kill us. All of us.”

“And how is it you know so much about them? How is it you knew where to plant your mines and muster your fleet?” Avon asked, while the others were still shaken by the images of slaughter Servalan was sending them.

“Because they’ve done it before. We found evidence of an extragalactic invasion approximately a hundred thousand years ago. Most of the evidence had disintegrated, or been destroyed, but with the whole galaxy to look in, we found enough to get nervous and start making preparations.”

“Not enough preparations, apparently,” Blake put in.

Servalan laughed. “This war is not over yet, Blake. If there’s one thing all of us know how to do, it’s survive and prosper against the odds.”

There wasn’t anything much to say to that. “So what, they kill everyone, leave for a hundred thousand years than come back to do it again?” Cally asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“On the contrary, it makes a lot of sense. You ever wonder why the galaxy was empty for humanity to claim? The galaxy is billions of years old. Why wasn’t it full? Because they emptied it for us.” Servalan rose from her command throne and waved a hand at her command staff, humans and mutoids, the best in the Federation. “This galaxy is ours and they will regret leaving it open for us to claim. We will make them bleed for daring to bring their tentacled selves into our galaxy.” It wasn’t a touching speech, but it got her people in their little bloodthirsty hearts.

“Supreme Commander, it’s time.”

“Then everyone, move out.”

Engines flared to life as ships moved away from the planet. Servalan withdrew to her office again, wincing slightly as she turned her attention back to the planet. In a few minutes, the time that it would take a projectile fired by one of their railguns to reach the planet, if they’d fired immediately after arriving in the system.

Nothing happened. Servalan smiled and leaned back, resting. She had time. It would be more than an hour before they reached the enemy fleet, if the enemy chose to target them, rather than the faster, lighter elements. She wished she’d kept them together, but with the delay light speed inflicted on the sensors, the enemy wouldn’t have time to intercept the battleships without exposing their flank to the lighter vessels. Servalan didn’t think they would do that, but would choose to savage the lighter vessels, especially with so many of her battleships so badly damaged. Given how long it would take to repair a battleship that was the right call. It was a gamble either way. And she’d already accepted their advice before she’d realized she’d have to travel with the battleships.

Servalan rang for a meal and distracted herself by indulging in an elaborate feast as she waited. She as halfway through the first course when her alarms went off. The enemy had fired on the planet half an hour after arriving, just about the time that the commander on Pandora had destroyed his own arcologies rather than permit the enemy to have them. They’d abandoned their efforts at conquest, capture and conversion in favor of direct destruction. Her plot to force a change in behavior by denying them any benefit from conquest had succeeded, most unfortunately.

City-sized barracks of mutoids went up; underground construction facilities shattered; shield generators flared to life, then were flattened; the railguns destroyed the gun emplacements without them ever having a chance to shoot back and brought down the fusion generators which powered the whole lot, leaving nothing but death on the cold world as the terraforming generators shut down or were blasted apart.

Everything went as she expected. They didn’t even see any combat. The five hundred escort ships however suffered massive casualties as they raced past the enemy fleet. They gave rather better than they got, for the range was short enough for their energy weapons to be effective, but long enough that their main cannon were relatively easy for the lighter ships to avoid. However, though they landed a dozen shots on the enemy ships for each one that found them, the enemy ships could take a dozen, two dozen, three dozen hits without major damage. Less than a hundred of the lighter vessels made it out, at a cost to the enemy of most of their own lighter ships and half of their capital ships.

Of the thousand ships that had been her attack force, less than two hundred would make it to Saurian Major. To destroy their defenses and shatter half the Federation fleet, the enemy had paid a price of approximately a hundred capital ships and five hundred escort ships. Unfortunately, the enemy clearly had at least three hundred additional capital ships and as many lighter ships. They’d have to improve their attrition ratio at least three-fold in order to balance the scales.

For that to be possible, they’d need to know what they were up against, besides ‘possessing large ships’ and ‘prefers railguns to energy weapons’. Hopefully the task force she’d sent to investigate the destroyed ships would have results soon. The only real question was where she should send the remains they’d capture. Everything they’d done so far indicated an extensive knowledge of the Federation’s capabilities, defenses and resources. Even in the Fortress system, their weapons had destroyed even the most hidden of facilities, and the Fortress system was one of the Federation’s greatest secrets.

So where could they hide from this enemy? Servalan smiled as she realized the answer. Somewhere new. She had just the place in mind.

Servalan was already sketching the facility out in her mind, which resources, human and otherwise, she could pull discretely from other projects, without anyone noticing. The facility would need to have no communications except for someone she trusted. The only question in her mind was who she could trust, given the enemy’s mind control abilities.

So she was quite thrilled to hear from the commander of the task force. At least before she actually heard what he said. “Supreme Commander, I regret to report that my crew have mutinied.”

“What?” For just a moment Servalan was shocked. It had been a generation since a Federation ship’s crew had mutinied.

“We’d successfully gathered an entire hold full of likely fragments of the enemy vessels—“ the Commander explained, discipline holding.

“No bodies of the aliens?” Servalan interrupted.

“No, Supreme Commander. We found many of the bodies of the creatures which they use as ground troops, but given their complete willingness to sacrifice those creatures and their similarity to the changes made in our own converted personnel, our scientists don’t believe those are actually the enemy, merely more converted slaves.”

“Agreed. But that doesn’t explain where the aliens are.”

“No, Supreme Commander, but—“ he was cut off by a loud explosion. “Sorry, Supreme Commander, they’re trying to blow their way onto the bridge.”

“What happened, Commander?” Servalan snapped.

“It was the crew and scientist I had working with the fragments. They’ve been turned. I don’t know how. There’s no enemy ships within detector range, but they all just turned at once. Two of the other ships have already been destroyed and one tried to escape, only to be destroyed by one of the others.”

“Why didn’t you report this earlier?” Servalan snapped.

“I’m sorry Supreme Commander, we lost power in their first strike. My troops managed to capture the auxiliary power generator and reroute power to the communication system. We need help Supreme Commander.”

Servalan did a quick count in her head, five ships had been sent, three destroyed, one in the midst of the mutiny…”What about your remaining ship?”

“After destroying the ship which tried to escape, it lost all power and is currently drifting. We saw it leaking atmosphere earlier, back when we had some detector functionality. It looked like one of them managed to force both airlock doors open, blowing himself out into space too, of course.”

“And there were fragments on all the ships?”

“Yes, Supreme Commander, we were all retrieving samples.”

“And it was the people who were closest to the fragments who were turned?”

“Yes, Supreme Commander. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m wondering if they’re somehow contaminating, or controlling our people. I know they’re just ship parts, but there’s nothing else here! The enemy ships haven’t showed any sign of stealth capability…they hardly need it.”

Servalan nodded. “Can you retake your ship?” Hands danced over controls, preparing for the answer.

“No, Supreme Commander, we’re too badly outnumbered. I had most of the crew helping move the fragments into storage. They aren’t smart enough to use computer systems, but they can shoot, or plant a bomb. No advanced tactics, but they don’t need them when they outnumber us five to one and don’t react to pain.”

“I see. Have you learned anything else?”

“I’m transmitting full logs and readings, Supreme Commander.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

“When can we expect help, Supreme Commander?”

Servalan pressed in the final sequence, “Immediately, Commander.”

Both of the surviving ships exploded as Servalan activated the Omega Protocol again. It was her right as Supreme Commander. Her duty. No one else had full access to the system, not with the President dead. It was supposed to be unhackable, but she only traveled on ships without the self-destruct protocols installed, just in case that proved not to be true. So far it had never been hacked. Faced with this new enemy, hopefully that would hold true.

She thought about the Omega Protocol for a long time. Mostly to avoid thinking about anything else. Like for instance how utterly screwed they were.

Finally she remembered a key fact and smiled and sent what information they had gathered off to Earth and a dozen other colonies, with orders to continue the distribution. She would distribute the problem to everyone, someone would think of something and, as for the panic it might cause, that’s what the security forces were for. After a moment’s thought, she even sent it off to the _Liberator_. Let Blake and his crew work their magic, she’d find a way to make the universe believe that she’d done it, that the Federation had done it, all that would require was Blake’s death and the destruction of the _Liberator_ and that could be accomplished so very many ways at the moment.

Her smile grew into a grin that would have been painful to see, if anyone had been there to see it. It might have taken her a minute, but she’d remembered that she was Servalan and she would not be stopped, not by her rivals, not by her enemies, not by the President and not by these alien monsters.

* * *

## 253.17 NC – The _Liberator_ , en route to the Saurian System

“Avon, we aren’t gonna do this, right? You’ve got a plan, right? Some way out of this, right?”

Avon didn’t respond. He was still reviewing the data Servalan had sent out. The endless chatter as Orac eagerly assimilated the data and spun theory after theory about the motivation and capabilities of their enemy had driven the others from the flight deck, except Cally, who had managed to force the recalcitrant A.I. to stop blathering long enough to forward the information to the Auronar, then withdrew before Orac could loose his spleen at being forced upon her…

When they were finally alone, Avon had removed the A.I.’s key, pocketed it, and went back to work. The images on his screen were horrific as he had Zen’s medical computers trying to figure out what exactly those conversion spikes did. They appeared to be injecting some sort of bionic enhancement directly into the body, but they didn’t seem to need any external input to do that, neither power, nor material and yet they somehow created cybernetics where there had been none before. The medical implications of that technology were mind boggling, as were the implications of the rest of their tech. It could make him rich beyond even his imaginings. Shame it turned you into a suicidal slave.

“Come on, Avon,” Vila’s voice was desperate as he grabbed the other man’s arm and turned him away from his work, “you and I aren’t like Blake and the others. We know what’s important. And not getting blown up, or shoved onto one of those spikes is what’s important. You’re always saying you’re the smart one, so how are we going to avoid that?”

“We aren’t,” Avon turned back to the console, pulling out of Vila’s grip.

“What?”

“The data shows more than a hundred years between the first destruction believed to be caused by the extragalactic aliens and the last. Given that even a single enemy vessel could depopulate a planet as heavily populated as Earth in approximately a day and the speed both in FTL and normal space that they apparently possess, it seems apparent that they spend a significant amount of time searching the galaxy for any survivors.”

“But we could—“

“The obvious thing we could do would be to take the ship into deep space and sit there for the rest of our lives. We could do that and survive. The ship has regenerative power cells, autorepair functions and sufficient supplies for a thousand years. If we just sit out there in that vast nothing, I doubt they could find us. Well, does that sound like a plan? Just the five of us floating around until we die of old age?” Avon silently added to himself, if I was going to do that, then I would have done it while you all were on trapped on Horizon. Even more silently, he thought that he would have done it if Cally had said yes when he’d asked her to come with him. Probably.

“There’s worse ways to go.”

“Worse than being trapped with no one but you lot for the next sixty years? I don’t think so.”

“Hey!”

“Go away Vila, I’m trying to come up with something we can use against these aliens. Perhaps I can adapt the old style meteor shields…too many of our current defenses are optimized to work against energy weapons which this enemy doesn’t seem to be using,” Avon was thinking out loud and continued to do so until Vila left, then he stopped.

Avon had been in bad situations before. Being cornered by twenty pursuit ships had been quite bad, being shot and arrested by the Federation had been very bad, almost dying at the hands of Zen and his automated defenses had been worse, and discovering that the woman he loved and believed dead had in fact been a Federation agent who set him up for the aforementioned shooting and arrest had been worst of all. He’d always come through all right, even when he didn’t particularly want to. Given past experience, he’d probably be the last human being alive in the galaxy. Well, him and Servalan. Alone in the universe together after the other monsters had fled. Now that was a thought that was as horrifying as it was alluring.

He shrugged off the momentary pique and gathered his thoughts, perhaps it was time to turn his attention back to the psychic shield he’d been intermittently trying to develop ever since their encounter with the rogue Auronar. There hadn’t been an opportunity to test it, because the model he’d constructed required a massive out-lay of power and so couldn’t simply be left on and what psychic threats they’d run into had refused to provide sufficient warning to activate it. He could have asked Cally to test it, but he hadn’t. Perhaps it was time to change that. On the other hand, the little the Federation ship’s detectors had picked up didn’t appear similar to what the _Liberator_ had detected when dealing with psychic phenomena. Some sort of broad spectrum jamming might work, but it would require massive power. That was, in fact, the problem with everything he could think of, too many resources were needed and there was too little time.

Blake returned to the deck as Avon was preparing to retire to his own quarters to continue his work in privacy. “Avon, I need to use Orac to contact the various resistance cells and the non-Federation worlds, muster what additional forces we can.”

“Certainly,” Avon produced the key and walked towards the seating area where Orac was waiting. When he reached Blake, he paused inches from the crusading rebel, “I wonder, will you use whatever forces you can muster as a reserve, or will you throw them into the fight?”

“What?” Blake asked, putting on his stupidest face, the one he used when he wanted Avon to make the pragmatic suggestion his high minded idealism wouldn’t let him make.

“Will you truly believe that the situation is so desperate that we must throw in completely with the Federation, or will you gamble that we can win and maintain enough strength to defeat the Federation as well? Will you just fight this war, or focus on the next?”

“Do you care?” Blake countered.

Avon cocked his head as if considering the point. After a long moment, he continued, “In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. I am…curious however which is of greater importance to you, humanity’s existence, or its freedom? You were certainly willing to kill millions by destroying Star One. I wonder if the fact that it’s not millions of them, but all of us, will change your calculus.”

Blake frowned at him as if he were a particularly stupid student. “I would have destroyed Star One in order to free humanity—“

“And yet I’ve heard you and your fellow rebels talk at length about how much better it is to die free than live a slave,” Avon interrupted.

“As opposed to your natural submission to authority,” Blake countered, as sarcastically as Avon could have managed.

“I make no claim that I work for anyone’s interest but mine.”

“Whereas I will protect humanity’s future, even as I seek to shape it.”

“Which is not an answer to what you will do with whatever madmen—“

“Freedom fighters.”

“Regardless, what will you do with those who answer your call?” Avon stepped closer to Blake, not that there was much closer to get.

“What seems best.”

Avon grinned. “Of course. Everyone always does. The question is what will seem best to Blake, leader of the Freedom Party, icon of those who would rebel against the mighty Federation?” The other man flinched at that, not bothering to hide his anxiety, his humanity, from Avon as he had to do from his followers, for Avon certainly was not amongst them. Whatever Avon read on his face, he stepped past the man, “I guess we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?” he asked, sliding the key into place.

“My current hypothesis is that the enemy are some form of energy being, which is why the Federation isn’t able to detect their corpses, and yet their energy permeates their vessels, meaning even fragments can have an effect not unlike that of the creatures themselves. Fascinating. The question is how to prove it. Clearly some sort of stasis or shielding to capture a living one. I suppose a defense against their influence over humans will be needed as well, lest they force one of them to release our captive.”

“And then there’s the question of how to capture one at all,” Avon put in, always gleeful to be pointing out the problems with other people’s plans.

“Orac. Connect me to Avalon,” Blake ordered, rather than let the two debate things endlessly as they would if given a chance.

Avon went back to work, keeping one ear on Blake as he ran through an impressive list of contacts, attempting to cajole, command, convince, or coerce them into mustering their forces to strike at the aliens.

He failed.

It was a little surprising to Avon, who’d watched the man talk people into suicide missions before. In fact, he’d talked Avon into doing things his way before, and that was a more impressive feat. But now he was trying to talk rebels into aligning with their putative masters and so they believed he had been compromised again and responded in the worst possible way, by going deeper underground, cutting contact with other cells, abandoning plans in action and covering up for themselves.

Hiding might work from the Federation, but you couldn’t hide from an orbital strike. Blake grew more and more frustrated as he worked his way through his list of contacts, trying to make them understand. And of course, the more frustrated and furious he got, the more certain everyone he spoke to was that he’d been compromised, again, and was back under Federation mind control.

Blake was running out of contacts, desperation burned in his voice. “This is Roj Blake, I am not under mind control and the information I’m sending you is _not_ a virus intended to trace your location, why would I need to trace your location, I called _you_ , I obviously know where you are already, don’t you dare hang up on me!” *CLICK*

Avon got the giggles. He couldn’t help it, Blake, the silver-tongued devil who could convince his crew of ne’er-do-wells (and Cally) to follow him on suicide mission after suicide mission, despite Avon’s best efforts, couldn’t convince a single one of his loyal followers of the plain and simple truth. Blake’s face was flushed and furious as he turned on the giggling man. “I wouldn’t think you would find my failure so hilarious—“ Avon’s mouth opened and Blake spoke over him, “when it means fewer bodies between you and the enemy.”

Avon’s giggles rose into bleak laughter.

“What’s so funny now?”

“Did I ever tell you about my time at New Oxford?”

“No,” Blake was surprised, Avon didn’t speak about his past.

“You know how the brightest minds of the colonies come to Oxford, only to discover that everyone else was the best of their colony, so they aren’t really special at all?”

“I remember well enough from my own college days. But it’s not just a comparison within the colonials, anyone from the Outer Worlds would have a hard time keeping up with someone from Earth. There’s just too many advantages in being there, at the cutting edge. But what does this have to do with anything?”

“Well, I didn’t have any trouble keeping up, nor did I discover that I wasn’t special and I didn’t bother to conceal that fact.”

“You shock me, Avon, _you_ were immodest?”

“I was honest regarding my abilities,” one of Avon’s nastier smiles crossed his thin lips, “and theirs.”

“I’m still missing the point,” Avon’s grin widened, but Blake held up a hand. “Spare me the sarcasm and explain.”

“After about seven months of me setting the curve in all of the electronics and programming courses, about twenty of my classmates decided to have a little talk with me. They waited outside the lab where I was working and ambushed me when I was heading back to my room. Their attempts to convince me to stop making them look bad were futile, as were my attempts to convince them to get out of my way.”

“And?” Blake interjected, bored.

“And so they beat the ever-loving hell out of me, put me in hospital for a month, on the theory that it would keep me from taking my exams—“

“And that they hated you.”

Avon shrugged. “That too. Of course this delusion failed, I took the exams while in hospital and still received the top honors for the year. Well, the top actual* honors.”

_*The Upper First Class Honors are reserved for the children of powerful politicians, or officers, and for use as political or diplomatic bribes. The people who will actually be doing the work for which they’ve undergone that very expensive training fight it out amongst themselves for the First Class honors. This system produces relatively little resentment as everyone involved in actually doing things view an Upper First as a CV as an indicator that the holder of those honors is a well-connected incompetent, so the two groups do not generally end up in competition._

“Is there a point to this story? Besides how smart you are?”

“While I was in the hospital, a…friend paid me a visit—“

“Given how you behaved, I’m surprised you had any significant-pause type friends,” Blake paused, remembering all the times he’d fought side by side with the other man and continue, “in college.”

Avon shrugged. “She was neither an engineer nor a programmer, but a political science student. I was in no way qualified to judge her abilities in that arena and so I didn’t.”

“Political science?”

“Indeed. She was a devotee of yours, in fact, back before you first recanted—“

“While under _mind control_!” Blake interrupted.

“Yes, yes, but to return to my point, she was extremely apologetic about not being there when the other students attacked. I pointed out that there was no practical difference between 20-to-1 and 20-to-2 odds, except that in the latter case, there would have been two people in need of a stay at hospital.”

Blake caught his point at last. “Your analogy doesn’t work, because here failure to intervene will not save us pain, but bring only death.”

Avon shrugged. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean that defiance will bring anything else.”

”You really believe we’re so badly outnumbered that trying to gather additional forces is pointless?”

“Yes.”

Blake was silent for a moment, then shrugged it off. He’d been fighting an impossible fight for most of his life. Everything else had changed, but that had not. “Then why are you still here?”

“Additional forces may be useless, additional knowledge never is. Victory will come, if it comes, from a technical achievement, not Servalan’s armies, or your schemes. So, if you’ll excuse me,” Avon retrieved Orac’s key, “Orac and I have work to do.”

It didn’t occur to Blake until after he’d left the bridge to ask what Avon’s significant-pause friend had said in response to this dismissal.

* * *

## 253.17 NC – Command Ship _FNS Unity_ , en route to the Saurian System

Servalan turned off the screen. She’d ordered the vivisections, she had no need to watch them and a great deal of work to do. With the information their detectors had gathered during the conflict with the enemy, her techs had been able to discern what frequencies they were using to communicate and thereby locate the enemy agents providing information to the enemy. Her doctors and scientists would find something to let them defend against the enemy’s mind control, or at least detect it, because so far they’d only found those agents who were actively reporting information to the enemy

None of the enemy agents were her top people, instead they were the top peoples’ secretaries, assistants, servants and slaves. Giving the order to have them brought in for a complete mental exam had ruffled some feathers, but she didn’t much care at this point. Their importance lay in control of money, factories and land. Hers lay in command of every armed person on the planet.

Servalan paused at that thought. She had risen to the rank of Supreme Commander by a combination of political connections and an unblemished* record of victory. But those victories had mostly been the result of political maneuvering and assassination, not field command. Indeed, her greatest victory had been bringing the entire Klorian Sector under Federation control by tricking the various warlords and pirates into attacking Kloria Major, decimating the main planet’s defenses, then single-handedly manipulated the warlords into turning on each other. By the end of her year-long deployment to the sector, there were no forces capable of opposing a Federation invasion and what authorities that survived were begging for Federation intervention to bring an end to the fighting.

_*For a value of unblemished based on an understanding that a blemish successfully blamed on a comrade, or superior does not, in fact, exist._

And now she ruled with an iron fist. Wherever had her velvet glove gone? She needed to find it fast, because while she left command of the fleet with Admiral Lana, she would be trying to bring in every independent ship she could find to aid in the defense of their galaxy. Since to be independent was to be independent _from the Federation_ , this was unlikely to be either pleasant, or terribly successful. Still, she would try, better to try and fail than fail to try, at least so long as no one who mattered would see her fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hackett discusses politics. Shepard gets promoted. Aria has a bad day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply. We’re shifting somewhat off canon now for Mass Effect, mostly because there isn’t any canon for what Shepard does in the intervening seven years between the Blitz and Eden Prime. I’m also changing the date on the destruction of Akuze, because…well, you’ll see. It doesn’t affect anything else. There is a reason (well, a handwave) for the reason for these shifts from canon, but you won’t see it for about a hundred thousand words.

## 2176 CE Arcturus Station

Assistant Minister of State Donnel Udina was willing to ask the stupid question. “What in the world is Project Overwatch?”

“It was a proposed project to provide military training, obsolete material and some support personnel to the unaligned Human colonies in the Traverse and Terminus,” Assistant Minister of Defense Paul Patel explained.

“It fell through due to opposition from...well, everyone,” MP Abril Bernard put in, she was at this meeting in her capacity as head of the Defense Committee.

“That’s hardly fair, Abril, it wasn’t a bad plan.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad plan,” she said. “I said everyone was opposed to it and they were. The Admiralty and Ministry of Defense screamed as loud as anyone else.”

“Why? It seems sensible enough to me. My ministry certainly deals with enough complaints that we aren’t doing enough for our fellow Humans in the Traverse, or our fellow sapients in the Terminus, depending on the prejudices of the complainer. This would be something we could point to.”

“Inshallah,” Paul whispered, deliberately audible.

Abril shot him a sharp look and for a moment Admiral Hackett was concerned the meeting was going to devolve into bickering and blame shifting, but the MP just answered the question. “All three constituencies had objections. The colonies in question didn’t like it because they don’t trust us. If they did, they wouldn’t be independent colonies. The parliament didn’t like it because we don’t want a war in the Terminus systems a—“

“Oh come on! How would this project cause war in the Terminus?” Paul argued.

“Because the story that starts ‘Alliance marines killed trying to save children from enslavement by Batarian slavers’ ends ‘pressure grows on Arcturus to take action to bring order to the Terminus systems.’” Abril said.

“It hasn’t so far,” Hackett pointed out.

“Please. We all know that half the pirates in the Traverse and the Terminus are affiliated with either the Hegemony, or some other polity in the area. We’ve been lucky so far that no proof has turned up of that, because when it does, we’re gonna have a war on our hands,” Abril countered.

“And that would be a problem, because?” he muttered, inaudibly.

She couldn’t hear him, but knew he’d spoken, so she continued her earlier line of thought. “And the _Admiralty_ screamed because it would have taken money away from one of their other pet projects.”

“Okay, I can’t speak for the other problems, but I don’t think anyone’s going to object to Shepard being sent out, not with the way the press is lionizing her. By the by, is her promotion going through?” Udina put in before the others could begin to argue.

“Yes,” Paul said. “She’ll be a Lieutenant Commander by the end of the week.”

“And she’s being bumped up to N7,” Hackett put in.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Paul said.

“What?” Hackett asked, surprised.

“The ministry thinks there is propaganda value in the woman who destroyed those pirates being seen to not be our best. After all, if that’s what an N6 can do, does the universe really want us to loose some N7s on them?”

A muscle in Hackett’s jaw jumped. “We _will_ talk about that later,” he agreed.

“Good, good, the Prime Minister has asked for Parliamentary approval of awarding her the Star of Terra. The vote will be unanimous,” Abril put in.

“Really?” Udina asked, dubiously, it was well known that you couldn’t get a unanimous vote out of Parliament on the color of the sky on Earth.

“There will be some abstentions, but the whip made it clear she expected party unity and the opposition isn’t going to vote against an award for a hero, not and let us claim her victory for our own. As for the minor parties, the isolationists like her because it was a defensive battle she won, Terra Firma likes her because she killed a bunch of aliens and the Family doesn’t like her at all, but they’re still taking so much heat for the whole Djibar* fiasco that they can’t do anything that looks positive towards Batarians. But none of this solves the other problems,” Abril pointed out.

_*The MSV Djibar was a colony ship constructed by the political party known as the Family, believing that all sapients form a single family, they had achieved several successes working with various Asari groups. Using the proceeds of those endeavors, they’d constructed the MSV Djibar, intended to create a joint Batarian and Human colony. The enslavement of the humans who’d volunteered was hardly a surprise. However, the Family was filled with idealists, but not idiots, and so they had looked into the Batarians they were working with and hadn’t missed anything. The execution of those Batarians who had accompanied them, adjudged traitors to the Hegemony, was kept secret, unlike the fate of the humans. And so the Family was ridiculed as fools and their Batarian allies died unmourned and forgotten._

“Admiral Kahoku had a suggestion regarding the funding problem. All the fleet can spare some personnel, let Shepard put out a call for volunteers and they’ll keep being funded out of their previous commands. The big expense is the ships, fortunately, we just came into possession of more than two dozen additional ships, some of them quite badly damaged, admittedly, but most working just fine,” Paul suggested.

“And if Elysium is any indication, the operation may be able to be self-funding,” Udina pointed out.

Abril’s lip curled slightly, “Parliament has really not looked fondly on self-financing military operations. Historically such operations either go very bad, or they go very, very bad.”

“Indeed, which is why we would need to put a watch-dog in place,” Paul put int.

“Which might resolve some of our concerns too, if the right watch-dog could be chosen,” Abril said.

“I was thinking about JAG Officer Hassan Bin Sinan Al-Jilani,” Paul suggested, bringing up the man’s file on the screens around the conference table.

“Why do I know that name?” Abril asked.

“You’re thinking of his cousin, Khalisah, she’s a reporter with Westerland News,” Paul said.

“Oh, right, she’s from my constituency. And she’s not a fan of me,” Abril noted.

“Oh, come on, she likes you more than she’s liked any of your competition,” Paul argued.

“Only because Terra Firma doesn’t break 1% in my district!”

Hackett was ignoring their byplay, attempting to figure out why he knew that name. Then he found it, Hassan was the only survivor of the ill-fated expeditionary force to Akuze. “Well, Shepard shouldn’t be able to overawe him,” he muttered.

“Why?” Udina asked.

“He deployed with the Akuze investigation team. No one who survived a thresher maw attack is going to find anything intimidating ever again,” Hackett explained. “Though,” he flicked through the screens, “I’m not seeing an obvious explanation for why a JAG deployed with what was supposed to be an investigation into a missing colony.”

“He volunteered,” Paul answered.

“Good man. Good marine. Good choice,” Hackett said.

“Fine, he’s a good soldier, but would he be able to keep Shepard from starting any wars and going rogue?” the MP asked.

“He’s an expert in fiscal law, so he should be able to handle the financial side of that,” Paul explained

“And the other side of it?”

“He can make sure she follows interstellar law,” Paul argued.

Hackett twitched slightly. A JAG’s duty was to advise their command on what was legal and what wasn’t, but they didn’t generally have any ability to stop command from taking actions which were illegal. Paul had served, though not in the Systems Alliance military, so he couldn’t be sure if the man really believed that or was playing it up to the MP. There was another problem with the whole argument however, which was which she honed in on.

“Something could be legal, but still start a war.”

“Only if she loses,” Udina countered.

“What?”

“The story which begins ‘Alliance marines stop pirate raid,’ does not end with ‘Hegemony declares war over dead soldiers.’”

“So, what, you want to gamble that she’ll win every battle?” Abril asked, disbelievingly.

Udina shrugged. “I want you to gamble that this new project won’t publicize their defeats and that they’ll follow orders if you command them to pass along all intelligence to Alliance Intelligence, not the press.”

“There will be leaks,” Paul put in.

“There always are. Leaks can be denied, or explained. Statements from someone wearing the Star of Terra cannot,” Abril concluded.

“She’s an Alliance officer. She’ll follow orders,” Hackett said.

“Since half the stories about our ‘military unpreparedness’ and why we have to double your budget come from ‘unnamed Alliance officers’ or ‘recently retired Alliance officers,’ you’ll pardon me if I don’t find that terribly reassuring,” Abril snapped.

“Come on, at least a quarter of those complaints are perfectly legitimate and you know it,” Paul interjected.

The MP gave Paul a hard look and the bureaucrat stopped smiling.

“Okay, yes, it’s been a problem,” Paul said. “But no active-duty officers talk to the press under their own names, now do they? They only do that once they’ve mustered out, right?”

“Like Shepard might choose to if we deny her this posting?” the MP asked, tone making it clear how little she liked to be blackmailed.

Paul shrugged, though he was unable to suppress a small smirk.

Abril leaned back heavily in her chair, hand tapping the table arhythmical. After a moment she leaned forward and began to read through Hassan’s file in more depth. Paul leaned forward to sell the idea harder, but Udina caught his arm, the man was in danger of overselling. Instead he pulled him into a discussion of the problems arising in the joint Alliance-Republics exercises which were currently occurring around Trategos, and especially the amusing series of problems arising from _very_ different fraternization rules between the two military forces.

Hackett ignored them both and returned his attention to the giant mound of paperwork his aides had reviewed, but which still needed his approval. A quick glance was all he could give most of it, but he didn’t have time to sit around doing nothing.

Udina kept up the amusing stream of chatter, not looking over when he heard the MP’s muttered exclamation when she saw what made Paul think that Hassan would keep Shepard from engaging in any xenophobic bullshit, and coincidentally, why _Udina_ had known Hassan’s name. The case had been an ugly one, half-a-dozen drunk Alliance marines gang-raping an equally drunk Asari maiden. The evidence had been slim, with the Asari barely remembering anything and the panel was more than willing to believe that an Asari maiden had been up for a gang-bang in a bar. The Ministry of State had leaned hard on the Admiralty to get them charged, but with the Admiralty pushing just as hard for a verdict of not guilty, the best State had hoped for was a verdict of not proven. Udina had even proof-read the statement they were going to release when that verdict came out.

The guilty verdict had been a surprise which they’d leapt upon, sending the poor JAG Officer on a goodwill and speaking tour of Asari universities. It had gone quite well, the man becoming a minor celebrity in Asari space, helped by a strikingly handsome appearance. It hadn’t done his career any good, indeed, there were whispers that the enmity of the rank and file were why a JAG Officer had ended up on the ground on Akuze, though when asked, all he would say was that the records indicated he’d volunteered.

Laura River, one of Udina’s colleagues, had looked into it when dealing with requests from some of the Asari gossip rags for interviews with Hassan after Akuze, seeking to ask him about how it felt to be disfigured by a Thresher Maw. After speaking with his physician and psychologist, the Ministry of State had politely declined, instead issuing a statement about how Hassan felt the focus should be on the fallen heroes. It had the benefit of even being mostly true.

Finally Abril finished reading the file and looked up, forcing Udina to stop in the middle of an anecdote. “Okay, if Officer Al-Jilani is assigned as the JAG for the project and oversees the financial side of things, and the committee can select their PAO*, _and_ orders are given to prevent them from launching any aggressive actions against sovereign state forces, that I can take to the committee to approve.”

_*Public Affairs Officer._

“We can do that,” Paul said.

“Then you have my support. Project Overwatch will be provided with the ships seized at Elysium, and volunteers from other commands. I’ll get you a firm answer from the committee by the end of the week.”

“I’ll have our ambassador inform the Councilors, unless we want to keep it secret?” Udina asked.

“We better give them a heads up, we’ll be doing a full press blitz with this, so we might as well,” Paul said.

“Make sure you check with the PM’s office. He’s being extra controlling about information releases since the Crux Corp’s* leaks,” the MP said.

_*The Crux Corp’s leaks were actually a series of documents released through legal requests for information made of the Ministry of Colonial Affairs which revealed sweetheart land deals for one of the PM’s major financial backers. Though technically legal, the deals and the attendant eviction of the colonists squatting on the land, dominated the news cycle until the news of the assault on Elysium broke._

* * *

## 2176 CE Elysium Orbital 6

“By order of the Admiralty, at the direction of the Prime Minister, for outstanding service, for undoubted valor, and for proven loyalty, Lieutenant Ashley Shepard is granted the rank and concomitant responsibilities of Lieutenant Commander,” the Minister of Defense said, as she attached the insignia of a Lieutenant Commander on Shepard’s dress uniform.

She saluted sharply and stepped back. The other promotions coming out of what was being called the Skyllian Blitz, dragged on for more than two hours, but Shepard kept her place, saluting each of the promoted officers as they accepted their new rank. This was only half the dog and pony show of when she’d been awarded the Star of Terra. Then she’d had to go back to Arcturus. That place was so thick with politicians, bureaucrats and brass that she’d been glad when she was sent back to Elysium, even if the place was full of bad memories and graves.

With that done, the Minister called her up again. The promotion had been expected. This was not, though it explained the heavier than expected press presence. “Lieutenant Commander Shepard, the Admiralty has a mission for you. The criminal filth that attacked Elysium have also threatened other worlds throughout the Traverse and the Terminus. The Admiralty assigns you the task of helping those worlds. The Admiralty charges you to hunt those pirates who would prey on our people,” she extended a hand carrying parchment with those orders in elegant script, as well as the pretty version of her promotion papers, rolled velum with handwritten script, rather than the tiny printed pages the others had received. The others would receive their pretty papers if they paid the hundred and thirty credits.

Shepard saluted the woman sharply and accepted her orders. “Yes, ma’am. It’s an honor.”

The minister was short, stout and pale, in skin, eye and hair alike. A captain with the 2nd Fleet during the First Contact War, she’d retired soon thereafter, going into politics. Minister of Defense was as high as she was ever going to get, despite being extremely competent, she was also famously abrasive with few political allies. She jerked her head, directing Shepard to follow her into a conference room. Her guards sealed the room, sharks in bulging business suits, civilians like all the bodyguards of senior politicians, but their movements said N-School to Shepard’s eyes.

“Sit down, soldier,” the Minister ordered, instinctively taking the seat at the head of the table.

Shepard sat.

“Okay, despite the original plans, you aren’t getting all the ships. You’re getting three of the frigate analogues and one of the larger armed transports to act as a command ship.”

“To secure the Traverse?” Shepard asked.

“To get started. You’ve also got the right to accept volunteers from the fleet and anywhere else you can, to seize resources from criminals and to accept donations from non-Alliance sources.”

“And from the Alliance itself?” Shepard asked.

“Your pay, the pay of any Alliance personnel who volunteer to join you, we’ve got a list of recommendations,” the Minister didn’t move, but Shepard’s omni-tool vibrated slightly, informing her of the arrival of said list. “more tactically useful, the right to draw standard supplies and fuel from Alliance depots and the right to request assistance from Alliance forces, which they will grant, unless doing so would endanger Alliance security.”

“Understood. How much operational control do I have?”

“Unlimited, as long as you stay out of Citadel Space.”

“So, I choose where we go, what we do?”

“Don’t start any wars, but otherwise, yes.”

“That’s an awful lot of discretion.” Shepard’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s the red tape?”

“That’s JAG Officer Al-Jilani’s problem. You can choose most of your own officers, but he’s not optional. Neither is Captain Mikhailovich.” Shepard’s eyes narrowed further. “Relax Lieutenant Commander, this is still your baby. The Admiralty’s too worried about the stink you’d kick up if they assigned it to someone else to dare to put someone else in charge, even if the politicians want to send you out on the campaign trail and State wants to send you on a propaganda trip through our ‘allies’. No, no, you’ve got your command.”

“Then why the captain?”  
  
“You’ve been infantry your entire career. You can choose your engineers and pilots, but you need a top flight space-tactician and you aren’t qualified to pick one out, so I did it for you. Say thank you, Minister.” That was all true. The fact that Mikhailovich was a protégé of hers with familial connections to important people in the main opposition party didn’t render him incompetent, even if it did make her impartiality very, very suspect.

But Shepard didn’t follow politics, so all she said was “Thank you, Minister.” Of course, if she had followed politics, then she’d have said the exact same thing, just for different reasons and she might have said it somewhat less sarcastically.

The Minister chose to placate her. “He’s senior enough that your other ship commanders will listen to him, but junior enough to follow your lead and you are still in command. You decide where you go and when you fight and are absolutely in overall command and when you’re dirtside, you’re in complete control. I’ve already explained to him that he only decides _how_ to fight, after you’ve already decided whether, where and when to fight.”

Shepard nodded. “Any other assigned officers?” It was standard to have your officers assigned to you, being able to pick her own people was a surprising luxury, but a tempting and addictive one.

“Nope. Officer Al-Jilani and Captain Mikhailovich will be here within the day. Your ships can be ready to go at any time once they’re crewed up, so I suggest you pick out a crew and get to work. Great things are expected of you Shepard, it will be almost impossible to live up to the expectations which the Alliance has placed on your shoulders. Good luck and don’t die,” the Minister rose, swung a lazy, navy salute at Shepard, which was answered with a precise, parade-ground snap, before dropping the Lieutenant Commander from her attention with an almost audible thud, turning her head to her omni-tool and the endless mounds of working waiting for her there.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Shepard said and left. Awkwardly juggling the papers, the hat she wasn’t allowed to put on, or put down and her omni-tool, she managed to activate the list of personnel who had already volunteered, along with the Ministry of Defense’s opinion on their abilities. More than twenty thousand marines and swabbies had volunteered for the maybe five hundred slots in Project Overwatch.

This was going to be a lot of work. Well, at least she could offload choosing the navy pukes onto this Captain Mikhailovich. Picking out the ground forces would be a bit trickier. For a moment she considered using Al-Jilani for that red tape too, but then she considered all the ways that could go wrong and decided against it. She shuddered slightly and went in search of a desk to look through the applications. This was going to be boring.

* * *

## 2176 CE Omega

Aria T’Loak was pissed. This, in-and-of-itself was not unusual. However, the sheer embarrassment she was suffering was unusual. The Queen of Omega had not been so embarrassed in decades. Being talked down to by a Volus was painful for most, their small stature and staggered speech patterns making it too easy for the subconscious to identify them as children, or mentally deficient.

This embarrassment was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the Volus in question was escorted by a squad of soldiers wearing the distinctive uniforms of the Palavan Blackwatch. She’d fought with and against the Blackwatch before, but at the time she’d had Asari commandos beside her, not Terminus mercs. She might still be able to win, she’d only grown more powerful over the centuries, but with the dreadnought _Kwunu_ and three different Volus bombing fleets drifting off Omega, victory on the ground would be thoroughly irrelevant.

Usually Omega’s naval defenses consisted of whichever pirates and mercenaries were on the station when Aria needed assistance. However, it was rare for her to bother as off-station ships weren’t her responsibility and on-station they’d have to land to steal anything. Aria’s land (well space-station) forces were more than sufficient to handle any feasible raid, but the Volus weren’t threatening a raid, but rather utter destruction.

Kaknar Dileed, Speaker for the Elkoss Combine claimed a seat on her dais, though he did not insist upon dethroning her. He did insist on staying there until she found and returned the Volus who’d been kidnapped and the property that had been stolen from them. Usually this would not have been an issue, or at least not one that brought Hierarchy warships into her space. But this raid had taken members of the clan which owned the Combine from within Volus space. That was a crime and an insult that the Combine was not going to overlook.

The small man ignored her, her dancers and the raucous party* which filled Afterlife with casual equanimity. This was hardly surprising as, though there were exceptions, Volus generally did not find Asari attractive. The joke amongst Asari was that this was just a defense mechanism to avoid explosive decompression which would result from trying futilely to copulate with one of them. And though some certainly did like to party, or at least ingest various forms of intoxicants which could get through their suit’s filters and then bounce around in the awkward manner they called dance, no one who rose to the top of Volus society was likely to have any frivolity in them at all.

_*Thrown to show the Volus and Turians that Omega was not intimidated just because a massive fleet was sitting out there shooting down anything which tried to leave Omega. It did not appear to be having any effect, though it was harder to tell with the Turian guards, who could be watching anything given their full helmets and 360 degree cameras._

Kaknar Dileed was a clan leader and power in his own right, as well as Speaker for the Elkoss Combine. He had no time to waste on anything. And was more than happy to let everyone on this degenerate station know it.

Bray finally returned, a dozen of the two dozen mooks Aria had sent with him were still alive, though most of them were bloodied. Still, they had all three of the captured Volus and the captain of the pirate ship with them, though the later had to be carried by two of the less injured thugs as he continued to thrash about, despite the fact that it looked like his entire face was a bruise and his hands were tied.

Bray gave her the slight nod which was as close as the veteran mercenary came to a salute. “His boys didn’t want to give up. We had to kill them all. Lost two of the boys bringing this dick,” he elbowed the smaller Batarian hard enough to make him grunt despite his armor, “in alive.”

Kaknar rolled to his feet. “Is…hsht…this correct, clanmates?”

A chorus of agreement came from the Volus.

“What the fuck, Aria!” the captain wheezed as he was put down, not particularly gently, but on his feet. “I thought this was a free port! Since when do you fucking raid the ships that land here?”

Aria swayed to her feet as the Volus continued to talk. “You shouldn’t have tried to start a war with the Hierarchy,” she kicked his feet out from under him and knelt beside him, lifting his head from the carpeted floor, strong fingers closing around his jaw, biotic energy swirling, “and you really should not have brought that war to my doorstep.” Her hand tightened and he choked, “And don’t _ever_ speak to me like—“

She saw the movement out of the corner of her eye, but did not think that the fact that Kaknar was pointing at the prisoner mattered. When the Batarian’s head exploded in her hands, she reconsidered. Fortunately, her shields held against the shrapnel that was the Batarian’s exploding skull. Unfortunately, her hands were too close, as portions of the exploding jaw were within the shield itself, but her gauntlets held up. As Aria leapt back, she was extremely glad that she’d chosen to wear her battle gear to this meeting.

A snapped command prevented an accidental bloodbath between her reacting mooks and the squad of Blackwatch. The heavy pistol disappeared into the Volus’s wristguard as he turned back to his clanmates.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” Aria shrieked, biotic energy swirling around her hands.

Kaknar turned back to her. “I…hsht…told you I would….hsht….kill him. Why….hsht…are you surprised?”

“Not while his head was literally in my hands, you lunatic!”

“He hadn’t sold…hsht…the cargo he stole…hsht…I didn’t need him for anything.”

“Next time you fire a gun at me, I’ll take it and the wrist it’s attached to off,” Aria said, voice level and frightening.

“Terrifying…hsht…” the Volus’s translator didn’t get intonation quite right, so she couldn’t tell if he was actually scared, or mocking her. After a moment’s thought she decided she didn’t want to know. “Level 489, Bay 12, let’s go…” he ordered the squad of guards and was, finally, if only temporarily, gone from Aria’s life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments at the end.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Human forces continue to fall. The Race ends well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still don’t own Blake’s 7. Sadly.

## 253.2 NC _Liberator_ , Saurian System

Commander, President, Counselor, Delta, Gamma, Alpha…the cards changed in Vila’s hands as he flicked through the practice patterns he’d learned years earlier, moving the cards so that whatever poor sucker was playing ‘Find the Alpha’ never, ever succeeded in their search. “I’m bored,” he announced to the room at large.

“Boring, Vila, you’re boring,” Avon countered, not bothering to look up from his work on the teleport bracelet.

“Seriously, Avon, Blake, why are we just sitting here?”

“I’d have thought you’d be happy, we’re in no danger here—“ Blake began.

“Alert, explosion detected in the main refueling station,” Zen interjected.

“Blake!” Vila snapped, infuriated at the rebel for tempting fate.

“Vila!” Jenna countered, feeling both of them were equally to blame for cursing them.

“Alert, explosion detected in secondary refueling station. Explosions are consistent with impacts from alien weaponry.”

“Get us clear of the other ships!” Blake ordered, ignoring their bickering.

Jenna already had the ship moving, diving through the cluster of Federation ships which were suddenly panicking and trying to alternatively rush to the aid of their fellows trapped in the burning and exploding mess of the refueling stations, or escape the destruction spread by those same stations.

“What happened?” Avon snapped at Zen.

Jenna was just as curious. Usually the expert in space-side combat, the alien weaponry and technology had changed the game and made all her instincts wrong. It was quite infuriating.

“Explosions are consistent with impacts from alien weaponry,” Zen repeated.

“Confirm, detectors are clear of alien ships.”

“No alien ships are located within detector range,” Zen confirmed.

“But they don’t have to be,” Blake said, suddenly understanding.

“What?” Vila asked.

“The refueling stations are in a fixed orbit. They could sit five hundred spatials out and fire where the stations will be when their projectiles arrive.”

“If they can do that…then any fixed defense, any planet-side base, is dust,” Avon said.

“We’ll be all right though. Minor course changes every hour or so and we can be sure that whatever they shoot at us will miss by spatials,” Jenna countered.

“Yes, we’ll be fine, but the rest of the fleet needs to dock to refuel and repair…” Blake argued.

“And if these aliens just pound every refueling station to scrap, they won’t even need to engage the Federation Fleet again. They can just wait for it to run itself out of power,” Avon agreed.

“But we’ll be okay, right? We don’t need fuel or anything?” Vila asked.

Avon grinned, “Wonder of wonders, Vila Restal can learn, if you repeat something often enough. Indeed, our powerbanks are based on regenerative antimatter powercells.”

“Well, can we sell them some of them, or something?” Vila asked ingenuously. Falsely ingeniously.

Blake flinched at that suggestion. Since the arrival of the aliens, they had all avoided the obvious suggestion of giving the Federation access to the _Liberator_ ’s more advanced systems, either because they did not want to lose the advantage, or because they didn’t want the Federation to misuse the technology. But, with the massive casualties the Federation fleet had already suffered, it was getting harder to argue that preparing for victory was the smart thing to do.

Avon ignored the awkwardness, “I already considered that. Unfortunately, it would take too long to construct additional powerbanks. And I think Blake would have moral qualms about what it entails.”

“What do you mean?” Blake asked.

“After our encounter at Spaceworld, I reviewed the files on the _Liberator’s_ construction Orac retrieved from the System, before its destruction. The autorepair system works off of nanites, as do many of the other ships systems.”

“Nanites?” Vila asked.

“Itty-bitty machines,” Jenna explained before Avon could get distracted into a verbal mudslinging competition with the thief.

“Yes. Once the reaction is stable, the nanites can generate the relevant electric fields to maintain the reaction essentially indefinitely. However, during the period that the reaction is being created, it requires constant adjustment to keep it from exploding.”

“I’m not seeing the moral quandary,” Blake interrupted.

“The adjustments must be made essentially instantaneously as changes are observed in the powercell. No computer could do it—“

“I could do it,” Orac interjected. Avon had left the key in, as the A.I. had been distracted by analyzing the data from their last engagement with the aliens and been unusually silent.

“Given the transmission lag on the observation systems and response signals, no, I don’t think you could,” Avon countered.

Orac didn’t respond, for a second which suggested he knew Avon was right, then he spoke in an even grumpier voice than before. “I said I could make the changes and I could, if I were wired directly into the system!”

“I’m sorry, maybe I’m being dense, but if no computer could do it, how do we have the powercells?” Cally asked, finally drawn into the question.

“Simple. They lobotomized certain of their people to ensure higher brain functions wouldn’t interfere with the solving their problem they’d been assigned, then wired their brains directly into the device. It only worked about one time in three, the other two times it exploded, so they did it out in space.”

Silence greeted that pronouncement.

Jenna, who’d been ignoring the conversation as irrelevant to the current predicament of not crashing the _Liberator_ into any of the other ships which had been hanging in defensive spheres around the refueling stations, seeking to protect their helplessly docked fellows. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, none of the ships had been hit. Despite the massive number of ships that were filling the nearby space, it was still mostly empty. Which was a good thing as Jenna slipped the _Liberator_ free from the panicking fleet. The wild maneuvering was dampened by the inertial dampeners, letting the others talk as if there was no crisis, which they did. That confidence in her skill might have been flattering if Jenna hadn’t been completely focused on flying the ship.

“Zen, activate battle computers,” she commanded

“Battle computers online.”

“Compute courses for the entire fleet necessary to ensure no collisions occur,” Jenna snapped.

“Computed.”

“Transmit their course to each ship. Now.”

“Transmitted.”

Jenna leaned back heavily in the command chair, blue eyes closing as the sweat adrenaline had wrung from her body began to evaporate as the moment of terror and action passed.

“You’re telling me that seven—twenty-one people died to give us our seven power banks?” Blake asked, horrified.

“No,” Avon’s reply was characteristically blunt.

“Thank—“

“How many people did die for our seven power banks?” Cally interrupted Blake’s relieved response, all too familiar with Avon’s tendency to misdirect with the literal truth. As was Blake of course, but he was more willing to accept misdirection if he didn’t want to know the truth.

“I don’t recall.”

“But it was more than twenty-one, wasn’t it?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Why?”

“Because there are seventeen power cells per power bank,” Avon said.

“So there were what—“ Blake began.

“357,” Vila interjected.

The others stared at him momentarily distracted.

“A thief who can’t do math doesn’t get his share,” Vila explained uncomfortably, shrinking under their stares.

“We’re living in a tomb,” Blake whispered.

“Melodramatic. None of the bodies, or brains were ever even on this ship.”

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier? And don’t say we didn’t ask,” Cally’s voice was low and dangerous.

Avon cocked his head, meeting her brown eyes with his bottomless black ones. “What good would it have done to tell you? You can’t change what was done. There was no upside to telling you and there were several potential consequences.”

“Like what?” Cally said, stepping towards him. Avon didn’t retreat at her approach, remaining in his seat in the couch at the front of the flight deck, though he did put down the teleport bracelet he’d been working on.

“The obvious one would be some sort of absurd refusal to use the power systems of this ship.”

“That would not bring them back, but it would kill us,” Cally closed the distance. She was looming over him, hand caressing the butt of her rifle.

Avon shrugged as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Less obviously, you might have decided that opposing the System was more crucial than opposing the Federation and our only technological advantage over them was Orac, whose existence they must be aware of by now. If the Federation could take steps to neutralize him, so will—“

“I have not been neutralized!” Orac interjected. “Simply because you are incapable of—“

Cally’s free hand removed Orac’s key without breaking her staring contest with Avon.

“So you left us in ignorance of what was being done to innocents because you didn’t want to face their torturers? And I thought Vila was the coward here.”

“Hey!” Vila snapped.

“Cally,” Blake said, cautiously.

Avon rose slowly, like a stretching cat. The others tensed to separate them if it should come to blows, though with the pair of them nose to nose, they’d have time for some good shots before they could be separated and neither of them believed in fighting fair. So it was something of a surprise when Avon leaned in, and whispered something in her ear. The blood drained from Cally’s face. Blake started forward, but it was Avon who gave ground, retreating over the couch, snagging the teleport bracelet as he went.

“Cally?” Blake asked, stepping forward and extending a hand.

“Don’t touch me,” she might have been carved from ice for all the emotion she, or her words showed.

Jenna’s eyes opened and the pilot took in the scene before her. “What did I miss?” 

“Avon being a dick and then leaving,” Vila said.

“Well, at least we can have a pleasant conversation about what to do next for once.”

Cally’s head snapped towards Jenna. “Indeed. You will. Excuse me,” she vanished out the door, back straight and rifle in hand.

“She’s not going to do anything stupid, right?” Jenna asked.

“Is shooting Avon really a stupid thing to do?” Vila snarked.

“She’ll be fine,” Blake said, with more hope than expectation.

“Sure. Avon’s not armed,” Vila joked.

“Avon’s always armed,” Blake countered.

“Guys, what are we going to do?” Jenna interjected.

“Wait for Servalan to get her people under control. Keep an eye out for the aliens.”

“Listen for gunshots,” Vila muttered.

Cally caught Avon before he reached his quarters. “Explain.” She commanded from behind him.

“I was guessing about why you left Auronar, I have no actual information regarding—“

“Not your insulting suggestion that I was a coward for leaving my home instead of fighting to change it. I mean the fact that you left the deck when there was a decision to be made which would affect your survival. Explain that, Avon.”

“We are in no immediate danger.”

“I remember once that you said that Blake wasn’t your leader, but rather that you chose to follow him. Choosing to follow requires knowledge of where you’re going. So why leave?”

Avon hit the door control and went in. “I can improve our odds of survival best by working on this project,” he waved the teleport bracelet, then turned to face her and continued in his dead level tones. “And I was undeservedly cruel to you, especially given your assistance resolving the business with Shrinker and Anna. I apologize for that.”

The door closed at his command before Cally stopped looking like a stuffed fish. Finally she staggered away, muttering ‘he apologized’ to herself over and over again. She tried to recall the last time she’d heard Avon apologize. Then she did. It was while they were prisoners of the System, when Vila had freed Avon and the hacker had attacked without checking who was coming through the door. But there the harm had followed immediately the action creating a debt. Here, it had been months since she’d assisted Avon, if killing his traitorous ex so he didn’t have to could be called ‘assisting.’

What in the world did that mean? And then she realized something else. He’d said he shouldn’t have been cruel to her _especially_ given what she’d done for him. Not because of what she’d done to him. As if he shouldn’t have been cruel to her, even if she hadn’t done it. Now that, she thought as a small smile played around her lips for a moment, was very interesting. The smile vanished. He hadn’t answered her question.

Her hand released the weapon, swinging it back onto her back instinctively and returned to her pocket, only to turn up Orac’s key, which she’d stashed without even noticing and which Avon hadn’t objected to her keeping Winged eyebrows drew together as she tried to put that all together into a story which made any sense.

“Cally! I need Orac’s key, I’m going to try to contact the other rebels and the independent worlds again, maybe they’ll be willing to see the light now,” Blake’s voice came over the intercom and Cally abandoned her puzzle to deal with the crisis. Long legs carried her away from Avon’s door at a brisk pace, but she couldn’t help the slight frown that crossed her lips, as she was sure she was missing something, or was missing out on something.

* * *

## 253.2 NC Command Ship _FNS Unity_ , Saurian System

“Get those fucking ships back into Formation 17. Tell Commander Delor to get his pursuit ships scouting the edge of the system!”

A chorus of ‘yes, ma’ams’ came from the crew as her message was passed. Fortunately the _FNS_ * _Unity_ had refueled first, so they were well clear when the refueling stations went up. Fortunately the fleet had mostly refueled, so only a few ships had been lost, it was the panic which would destroy the fleet, but that was mostly under control thanks to the those damn rebels and their machines. They’d bought her time to get back to the bridge from her quarters and take control.

_*FNS: Federation Naval Ship_

“And someone tell me what the ever-loving fuck happened to the refueling stations!”

“They were hit with something with the same qualities as the railgun rounds that the squids have been using,” one of the scanner techs put int.

“How the hell—No range limits…right. Shit. Okay. Why the fuck didn’t our detectors pick it up?”

“They’re too small and too fast, ma’am. There’s no way we’re going to detect them. It’s just not possible. When the ships are in range we can detect when they fire and calculate their ballistic paths, but without seeing the enemy ships…” a different tech explained, while the first one was busy being intimidated by his Admiral’s fury.

“Then why the fuck didn’t we see the ships? Those damn railguns don’t accelerate their rounds to FTL speeds.”

“They must have come in behind a planet so we wouldn’t see the flare of the arrival, then stayed far enough out that our optical detectors couldn’t see them,” the original tech explained.

“Fucking cowardly squids!”

“Report the status of my fleet,” Supreme Commander Servalan said as she swayed in, white silk trailing behind her.

“Five battleships destroyed and the refueling stations are gone. More than a dozen battleships didn’t have time to refuel. They’re going to be dead in space within the hour.”

That hadn’t been what she meant. The question wasn’t what forces had she lost. It was what forces remained. Less than two hundred ships had reached the Saurian System, but with the arrival of the remaining fleets, they were almost up to the numbers of the fleets which had already been destroyed. The numbers, but not the tonnage. Less than a fifth of their ships were battleships. “Bring the fleet to Earth. We must protect the homeworld,” she said, as if she cared about such things. Appearance was everything, as she knew all too well. “Admiral, make sure they can’t do this to us at Earth.”

“Yes, Supreme Commander. I’ll set pickets and patrols. We’ll attach some engines to the refueling stations too. Get them moving, even a little on non-ballistic trajectories and these bastards’ll only hit open air. I’ll keep the majority of the fleet out of the gravity well so we can jump to wherever they show up. We’ll cycle ships in to refuel, while keeping the majority available to land on the squids like a sledgehammer!” Admiral Lana’s voice grew strident, though whether she was trying to convince the crew, Servalan, or herself that victory was still possible was unclear.

“Of course, Admiral,” Servalan said, as if that had been her plan as well. “Get them moving.”

“And the ships without power?”

Servalan didn’t hesitate even though she didn’t actually have any opinion about that. The ships were useless now, but the Supreme Commander could not be seen to have no answer, she had to be in control and had to be seen to be striking back, so she spoke as if she’d had a plan all along, “Take their crews off, and I’ll set the Omega Protocol on all of them, to trigger the moment any ship gets too close.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lana said, moving to the main screen and examining which ships had the power, room and life-support to get the crews of the battleships off.

“Coordinate with General Samor,” Servalan said, before turning away and evaporating towards the exit, all elegance, even in this situation.

“Yes, ma’am,” the admiral agreed.

“Additional explosions on the surface of Saurian Major, ma’am. It appears the enemy fired a full barrage on the planet shortly after they fired on the refueling stations.”

“As expected,” Servalan said without showing any concern for what the destruction of their primary communications hub would do, because she wasn’t feeling any. Since the destruction of the previous communications center at Saurian Major by Blake and his compatriots, she’d had it rebuilt and stationed a fleet there to ensure it didn’t happen again and to enable rapid response to any communications which came in. But with the vast majority of her forces already present, communication was useless, unless she wished to listen to the whining of the helpless. She did not.

There was a slight flare from the scanner displays, “Cruiser 94 has been destroyed. Enemy barrage continuing.”

“Evasive course, but maintain formation,” Admiral Lana asked.

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

* * *

## 253.23 NC Rebel Base, Dolor Colony

 _Contact the Liberator. We need its help. It can transport us out of here. Contact the Liberator. CONTACT THE LIBERATOR._ Mark Colt shook his head sharply, trying to clear cobwebs of exhaustion and whispering doubts alike. “Maybe,” he whispered, almost against his will, “we should contact Blake. He warned us about this—“

“A warning you ignored!” Minerva snapped from the other side of the table. The rest of their people were out fighting to hold back the unending tide of monsters spewing from the belly of the massive ship on the surface of the planet, leaving Avalon, her bodyguard and her two lieutenants in the conference room of the bunker they’d commandeered from the Federation forces. Taking the bunker hadn’t been too costly, with most of their forces withdrawing in anticipation of the destruction of the colony. They’d lost almost a third of their people stopping the deployment of the Solium Radiation Device which would have destroyed all life on the surface of the planet.

“A warning we all ignored,” Avalon put in levelly, as if she were not hearing the same whispers in the back of her own mind. Whispers which needed her attention, so she gave it, multi-tasking with the skills she’d gained running a dozen revolutionary campaigns against the Federation. There was something familiar about it. Her eyes widened slightly as she remembered where.

“I still think we should contact Blake. He’s never been one to hold a grudge, and surely the _Liberator_ can take one of these enemy ships,” Mark pushed.

“At least that’s true,” Minerva muttered. Her voice strengthened, “The _Liberator_ reportedly has the power of a battleship and the maneuverability of a pursuit ship. It could race in, blast these monsters to bits and get us out. It even has enough room to get most of the surviving colonists out, with half the planet in ruins.” 

“Even if that was correct, there’s more than one enemy ship in the system,” Avalon pointed out.

The eyes of the others at the table narrowed as she mentioned this truth, which they’d all been ignoring. Minerva spoke up first, “There’s only one down on the surface though—“

“Which means there’s only one in position to be easily destroyed, the other three make any such rescue impossible,” Avalon pushed away the voice, ignoring it for the moment, but made a minor hand signal and her bodyguard Trion straightened slightly, coming alert and watching. A delta-grade laborer before almost being killed by a Federation goon-squad, Trion had spent his life doing heavy manual labor and his hugely muscled frame showed the effect it had had on him. His loyalty was hers because she’d saved his life and she pitied the alien who had to try to get into his head, but the others…they were cunning, ambitious, idealistic, all the things which were used against you when it was your own mind that was being compromised. For all their intellect, they didn’t catch the hand signal, because they hadn’t seen it before.

“Only if they got caught,” Mark argued.

Minerva backed him up, which was suspicious as all get-out as the two of them were somewhere between competitors and enemies. “And the _Liberator_ has to be more maneuverable than those massive ships!”

“Surely it could slip through and get us out.”

One of Avalon’s hands disappeared under the table and she forced her body to relax, sprawling in the chair as she aimed the still-holstered weapon on her hip in Minerva’s direction. “I see your point—“ _CONTACT THE LIBERATOR,_ her hand shook, almost pulling the trigger, “but even if we did ask, Blake knows better than to sacrifice himself, his ship and his crew in a futile attempt at a rescue.”

“They came to rescue you from the Federation,” Minerva argued, more forcefully than usual.

“Even when they had every reason to believe it impossible!” Mark added.

“True. Maybe if we tell them the full story, give them a full briefing on the enemy presence, they’ll be able to come up with a plan, or at least provide us some advice,” Avalon lied, testing them, if they agreed then the enemy clearly had other resources in the area, if they refused, then she had a good count on the enemy.

“NO!” her lieutenants chorused at her.

“Oh, why not?” She asked, all level calm, despite the whispers.

“Because…” they searched for a reason, “if we told them all that, then they wouldn’t come!”

“You do realize that your position is internally inconsistent?” Avalon asked, eyes steady. Some forms of mind control could be overcome if the subject became aware of it.

“What?”

“You cannot simultaneously maintain that they could come here safely and that we can’t tell them what they would be facing, because they couldn’t come here safely if they knew the truth about what they were facing.”

“I’m not saying that they _couldn’t_ come here safely. But that they _wouldn’t_ come here if they knew what they were really facing,” Minerva replied, falling deeper into her delusion.

Mark agreed, confusion banished by that explanation.

“In order to come here safely, they would need all the information—“ Avalon argued.

“No!” Minerva shouted, jumping to her feet, Mark following her to his feet.

“Very well.” They began to relax and Avalon continued, trying a different tack. Some mind control forces could be overcome by a direct challenge from a pre-existing loyalty. “Then understand, I am in command here and I am telling you that we are _not_ contacting Roj Blake.”

Mark and Minerva glanced at each other, then drew their weapons, Minerva’s pointed at Avalon, Mark’s pointed at Trion. “I’m sorry, Avalon, but I’m not going to die because you’re too selfish to admit we need help!” Minerva snapped. “Just tell us—“ *CRACK*

The shot punched through the table and caught the rebel low in the gut rather than in the chest as Avalon had intended, but it still sent her staggering backward, arms instinctively reaching in to push against the wound, necessarily bringing the weapon off target. Mark turned to face her as she kicked backwards, knocking her chair flat and summersaulting backwards, weapon coming free of its holster. Before she could bring it to bear on Mark, Trion moved, catching the smaller man from behind in a bear hug. A quick snap and the rebel lieutenant’s spine broke under massive hands.

The bodyguard dropped him and casually crushed Minerva’s head as she lay there trying to hold her guts in. “What now, boss?” 

“Now? We contact Roj.” She typed in a warning about the enemy’s behavior thus far and all files they had on both of her enemies. She couldn’t know if they would receive it, but she could send it. With that done, she went for a walk. The Solium Radiation Device was unguarded, because she’d removed the core, without which the device was no danger. The core was on her person, for safety’s sake, since it could not be destroyed. No one else got in her way as she went to the room, put the core in, and paused. The whispers in the back of her mind were the same as the ones which had been inflicted on her when the Federation had sought to rip her secrets and her will from her captured body.

She would not permit that to be done to those who had followed her, or those who she had come to this world to defend and free, so the core slid into place. There should have been last words worthy of Avalon, the great rebel leader, but they eluded her. Instead she turned to Trion, “I was born Alexia Dorva, did you know that?”

“No, boss,” Trion said, voice steady as stone.

“I gave up my name so the Federation wouldn’t know which family to massacre, or enslave, for my actions.”

“Okay, boss.”

“But I’d like to die as Alexia Dorva,” she concluded sadly, turning back to the control panel.

“Okay, boss.” Trion shot her in the back of the head, killing her instantly, obedient to the whispers in his head and what they could convince him was Avalon’s wish to die.

Neither he, nor the enemy on the planet realized that in placing the core back in, she’d restarted the countdown begun by the Federation forces until the device went off, killing everyone on the surface of the planet.

* * *

## 253.24 NC Homeworld of the Race

Giroc staggered along, leaning heavily on her staff, summoned by her mother’s voice, Sinofar’s summoning lacked its usual irritatingly infinite compassion. “What is it, Sinofar? We’ve only been resting for a cycle or two, the power has only just begun to rise again—“

“Yes, it has, but something comes...” the young looking woman was staring up at the stars and did not look at the tottering old wreck that was her daughter.

“Something so full of hate you cannot resist the urge to meddle?” the old woman asked, mockingly, her staff moving almost threateningly.

“No. These beings know no hate, but have shed the blood of billions.”

Giroc’s wrinkled blue skin flexed as she frowned at that. “No hatred, but the blood of billions? Where’s the fun in that?”

“There’s no fun in any of this—“ Sinofar began righteously.

“Yes, yes, mother, let me look,” Giroc communed with the nanites that flooded her system and looked up past sky and blackness to what approached their shattered world. Her hand tightened on the staff as horror and terror burned through her eyes to her heart and soul. The nanomachines that connected her and her mother and the surviving weapons on the planet, reacted to her contact with the creature, automatic defenses mostly shut out the attempt by the creature to seize her body, but as nanites purged their corrupted brethren, they could not control her pain as they usually would have. For the first time in centuries, she felt true pain. The staff lifted under the pressure of her hands and Giroc collapsed backwards, convulsing, staff beating a tattoo against the ruined cobblestones beneath her.

In seeking to control her, the creatures had, necessarily touched her. She had not understood everything, or much of anything, but she’d felt the blood, oceans of it, enough even for her, but with none of the righteous fury, the hatred of the enemy that she expected, but something different. Some powerful emotion, not mere duty powered these creatures in their slaughter.

That was…unacceptable. She was a child of war and had fought all her life, but she fought because she hated her enemies. That was the only reason to kill. Whatever this was, crawling over and under her skin as the nanites fought each other, was _evil_ and she would see it dead, for she hated it.

Sinofar broke the link between her daughter and the approaching abomination, but she did not reach down to aid the fallen woman as she usually would have. Instead, she focused her attention on the systems. Most of the weapons of the Race had been destroyed in the same wars that had destroyed their planet, but the final weapon was still there, its power always rising. They had emptied the power banks only a cycle ago. Previously she had left the weapon to recharge at its own rate, while she and her daughter rested in cryonic storage until its power rose to the level where it had to be discharged or explode, taking the planet with it.

The rest of it was her own exercise in penance for the sins of her people. Trying to teach others what her people had learned at the cost of their existence. Perhaps it was as pointless as her preservation of her daughter and their empty world, but she was Sinofar, Guardian of the Race. She would preserve all that was left of her people. And now came an enemy. All the systems of the weapon which had destroyed their people activated, not the patient waiting of before, but the full, powerful threat of the thing, active and alert.

The enemy came on in massive ships, too massive for the weapon to damage at this range. They would have to wait. Giroc rose slowly. “Well, it seems I will get to rest at last after all,” she whispered, her voice low and bitter. “But,” her old face rose from her chest, “the last of the Race will not go into oblivion like mewling infants. We will show them why we were called the masters of war, will we not, my mother? My guardian? Will you not unleash your great weapon on them?”

“Yes, we will. Handle the transporters, I’ll handle the weapon,” Sinofar agreed, releasing the full power of her daughter’s nanites with a thought. The younger woman straightened as the machines repaired the body she’d been confined to and she transported herself to their remaining transit terminal and began loading the explosives, biological, chemical and radiological weapons, getting them ready to go as soon as the enemy ships entered range.

The first three vanished and as she watched eagerly completely failed to rematerialize. Whatever defenses the enemy had was blocking the transporter. Giroc swore, very definitively not under her breath.

“Draining enemy power,” Sinofar’s voice echoed in her head, transmitted by nanites, and amplified by her mother’s will to be reminiscent of the voice of the Allmother, in the days before the last of the churches had been destroyed. The energy suck was the defensive component of the great weapon, but she’d radically underestimated the power of the enemy ships. While she’d been able to stop the _Liberator_ and a trio of pursuit ships with no difficulty, using the power drain on these creatures was like trying to drain the ocean with a garden hose.

The power banks rocked to full power as one of the approaching ships slowed under the drain. She discharged the weapon, not in the massive field of destruction it was intended for, but in a narrow beam, only thirty meters in diameter. It ripped through one of the ship’s hull like the armor plate was nothing at all. But the energy drain was still going, power banks refilling too fast. The weapon was not intended for rapid fire. The main discharge point, a city-block-sized hole in the world, was glowing brilliantly as the enemy ships raced forward in random spirals, seeking to evade a second shot.

She ignored the danger and fired a second time as the energy banks had recharged faster than she would have believed possible. This time the beam only clipped one of the ships trailing tendrils, clipping it off easily, but the ship continued on its way. For about ten seconds, until Giroc targeted the transporter on the damaged ship. Whatever defenses it possessed had been destroyed by her mother’s shot, and so the ship was ripped apart in a flurry of nuclear fire, burning so bright about the world that it appeared almost like a second sun. Giroc laughed as she raced forward, moving more ordinance into place.

The enemy ships did not return fire, but rather sought to land, despite their massive bulk. Giroc waited patiently, for whatever field they were using to jam her transporters might fail when they entered the atmosphere. Her attention was also on the trailing ship as the energy drain continued to affect it. Soon, but not soon enough, she would get her chance to destroy another of these creatures that profaned the art and beauty of war with their pettiness.

In fact, she would not, for when Sinofar triggered the weapon a third time, seeking to avoid another deployment of the weapon as the weapon of mass destruction it had been designed as, the whole thing exploded. The massive energy banks, connected to the power-plants which drew from the heat and pressure of their location, deep within the planet, went first, causing the shields of the plants to fail and the pressure of what was, quite literally, the weight of the world, instantly crushed the power plants, which responded explosively. The weapon went through the heart of their world, to emerge on the other side and so the massive force of the explosion cracked the planet in half, killing Sinofar and Giroc instantly. The lead enemy ship was destroyed, but the shields on the next two held easily, however the shields of the last ship were critically compromised by the energy drain, leaving it vulnerable to the sudden barrage of planetary shards.

It suffered only minor damage before its two remaining comrades closed in, guarding it with their own shields until its energy reserves were completely restored. **Harbringer** did not curse, neither did it dissemble. Instead it simply informed the others that it had failed. The weapons and technology of the Race were as gone as the Race itself, and their planet. This cycle had already proven a disaster. The idiot Humans proving unable to understand Element Zero and thus pursued an entirely different route to infest the galaxy, which had already complicated the harvest and cost much, but the loss of three capital ships to a species which had never even managed to leave its own homeworld before exterminating itself? That was…unacceptable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments always welcome.


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cerberus recruits. Wrex makes bank. Shepard plans. Samara meets some folks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t own Mass Effect, alas.
> 
> This chapter contains some bashing of lawyers and bureaucrats. I’m both, so I choose to believe this is okay. However, please do not take anything said herein as legal advice. Seriously, don’t do that.
> 
> We’re starting to go significantly off-canon now for a couple of reasons which should become clear. Most obviously, because there is no canon I’m aware of for what Shepard was doing in between his/her defining event and Mass Effect 1.

## 2176 CE Elysium

“Elanos Haliat, or, do you prefer John Smith? An alias used to replace a true name that sounds like an alias. Some people might find irony in that.” 

The man jumped at the voice from behind him. Some part of his mind noted it was female, young, attractive and confident, but the rest of his mind sent one hand to activate his **cloak** as the other retrieved a submachine gun from behind his back. 

He disappeared before hitting the ground, which didn’t stop the man who’d come out of the shadows through which Elanos had been sneaking from flattening him with a savage tackle. The pirate leader tried for an elbow strike, but the man on top of him was massive and in full and _heavy_ armor. Switching into stolen civilian garb had seemed like a good idea as he attempted to sneak off the planet following the utter destruction of his plans. Now it did not, as his unarmored elbow rebounded off the armor, leaving his entire left arm numb from the elbow down, while his right was trapped behind his own back, gripping the SMG, but pinned in place by the man’s weight.

“I’ll call you John then, shall I?” the voice said, gradually growing louder as she approached, not that he could see her through the massive bulk of the man atop him.

The **cloak** faded as its power ran out. The mountain of a man pinned his arms the moment they could be seen and jerked Elanos to his feet and spun him around to face the speaker.

A tall, gorgeous woman with long black hair, dressed in a black and white cat-suit that left very little to the imagination, stood above him. The Carnifex on her hip made it clear she wasn’t just a pretty face. Or, if she was, then she was a very well equipped one.

“My name is Elias Hale, I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not him! I’m just a traveler, I was stranded here when the attack came, I just want to go home!” His story came out in awkward bursts, he was not a skilled liar, he hadn’t had to be in years, but it might work. The ID on him matched the story he was telling and the fake ID was a real work of art, provided by one of his few remaining contacts on Elysium, far too many had either been killed in the crossfire, or exposed themselves by joining his forces.

The destruction of the fleet he’d assembled was a disaster, but being trapped on planet with the destruction of his escape vessel was a nightmare. Still, if he could just get off world, then he could rebuild his position. He’d built himself from nothing before. He could do it again. Three weeks hiding downside and the Alliance guards had finally been distracted, his moment had come, but it was clearly a trap. It might, just might be possible to slip that trap, especially since this wasn’t an Alliance trap, those weren’t Alliance colors the woman was wearing and that _certainly_ wasn’t an Alliance uniform she was wearing. Besides that, he was familiar with Alliance tactics and they didn’t include two-person snatch teams. They didn’t deploy in units smaller than a fire team of four.

His thoughts were cut off by the sight of the Carnifex rising, its massive muzzle drawing his eye and stopping that hope. “That’s unfortunate. Cerberus has no use for Elias Hale and I do not permit people for whom Cerberus has no use, to see my face and live.”

The man pinioning Elanos’s arms twitched slightly to ensure he was out of the path of the shot. Even through the armor, he could feel the man trembling slightly, he believed that she would shoot Elanos.

He’d heard of Cerberus before, rumors mostly, but some boys he’d known had raided one of their facilities once. They’d suffered heavy casualties, but they’d come away with information and material allegedly related to Cerberus. Their subsequent sudden, violent deaths leant some credibility to their claims. The sheer amount of money the Shadow Broker’s agents had paid for the information he’d taken from them made him quite sure that whatever Cerberus really was, it was important. In fact, that windfall was part of what had permitted him to gain the power and influence he had.

Elanos sighed heavily, dropping the act altogether. “Fine, I prefer Elanos Haliat. And what do you prefer? Echidna? Persephone? Hades?”

She very definitively did not laugh at his mockery of the name of her organization. Ice clear through. The man’s grip tightened menacingly, but he didn’t act without instructions from the woman, who was clearly in control. “You already know my face,” she smiled, which didn’t soften her appearance at all, “well, you know this face. You don’t need a name as well, not yet anyway.”

“Fine,” Elanos said. “What is it you would like to discuss?”

“Me?” her laughter was ice cracking under your feet when shore was in sight, but clearly out of reach. “I don’t want to discuss anything with you, pirate, but the Illusive Man wants to see you. It’s time for us to take a trip. The only question is, are you going to come along quietly,” a flash of white teeth that was distinct from the flash of a blade in some respect, though if asked, Elanos couldn’t have said what respect. “or are you going to come along dead silently?”

“Not a metaphor?” He asked, going for charming.

“No,” she said, tone making it clear he’d missed.

“I’ll come along quietly.” The ‘for now’ didn’t need to be said.

“Good boy.” The ‘we’ll kill you if you try anything’ also didn’t need to be said.

* * *

## 2176 CE Kuggani Spacedocks

The deal was done. The contact had shown up, provided the oral and electronic passphrases and exchanged the single use, biometrically locked electronic vault for the Eezo lightened case of refined, unmarked* Element Zero.

_*Due to the necessity of Eezo for modern military and civilian ship construction, Eezo mined or refined in Citadel Space is molecularly marked with its point and time of origin, meaning that there’s no legitimate market for stolen Eezo, in Citadel Space. Since the governments affiliated with the Citadel are a net purchaser of Eezo from the unaffiliated worlds, unmarked Eezo is not particularly suspicious, even though it is the currency of choice for transactions of which no record is desired._

Urdnot Wrex had kept one eye on the pair of cops lingering outside the café near where they were making the exchange, while the other one watched the other side of the street. The cops ate their lunch. One, a big Batarian glanced over at the pair of Volus trading a large briefcase to a Drell for a disk and started to rise. His older, smaller, smarter comrade very definitively did _not_ look towards the giant Krogan wearing heavy battle armor and carrying weapons whose recoil would break the arm of anyone else in the spaceport and instead caught his partner’s arm and pulled him back into his seat.

There were some things the local police weren’t paid enough to deal with and a Krogan Battlemaster topped that list. Wrex gave the world a toothy, arrogant smile as he escorted the Volus back to where their ship was waiting.

“That was easy,” the younger of the two Volus said. Wrex hadn’t bothered to learn their names. The contract was to keep them alive, not make friends with the Broker’s minions.

The older one smacked his comrade in the arm. “Don’t say *HSHKT* things like that!”

“Why not?”

“Because the universe *HSHKT* loves to prove such statements *HSHKT* wrong!”

“Come on brother, *HSHKT* you’re no believer.”

“Not in fate, no, *HSHKT* but in taking the *HSHKT* 20% Tempting Fate surcharge *HSHKT* in his contract, *HSHKT*” a hand waved at Wrex’s smirking self, “out of your share? *HSHKT* That I _definitely_ *HSHKT* believe in.”

The younger Volus looked up at Wrex, “You have a 20% *HSHKT* ‘Tempting Fate’ surcharge *HSHKT* in your contract?”

“Yes,” Wrex said simply, smiling as he considered what he would do with the additional pay. Probably the same thing he’d always done with his pay.

“That *HSHKT* can’t be enforceable,” the younger Volus said. “*HSHKT* How would you know *HSHKT* when you violated it?”

“I’d tell you. I’m telling you.”

“That’s not *HSHKT* how contracts work!”

“It is when they’re with Urdnot Wrex.”

The ship loomed up and Wrex escorted them inside, pausing at the hatch. “Well, that was easy,” he agreed, looking out over the throngs of people. Fate, though tempted, did not send snipers, or saboteurs, no assassins leapt from the shadows, nor did thieves attempt to sneak past him under the cover of a **cloak**. “Well, that’s just disappointing,” he muttered, walking through the airlock and sealing it behind him.

* * *

## 2176 CE Project Overwatch Command Ship _Mindoir,_ in orbit around Elysium

Shepard greeted the officers she’d been assigned in her standard uniform, rather than the dress uniform she’d worn to her promotion ceremony. It was more comfortable and conveyed the right degree of ‘we’re all just soldiers together’ that she was going for. Her officers apparently disagreed, as Captain Mikhailovich was wearing a dress uniform with its captain’s insignia new and brightly polished. The medals on his chest made it clear that though he might have been a popinjay, he wasn’t _just_ a popinjay. Two awards for personal bravery and several badges indicating participation in campaigns which had seen heavy space combat decorated his chest and she knew from his file that he was ranked S6, indicating he was considered proficient in all levels of space command which didn’t involve multiple fleets, just as her own ranking of N6 indicated almost complete proficiency in ground combat and special operations. There had been whispers that she was going to gain the coveted promotion to N7, but not even politics could grease the wheels of the military bureaucracy into acting with such speed. 

She examined Mikhailovich closely as she approached them. Both her new officers were quite properly awaiting permission to board in the airlock, but Mikhailovich was the priority, for he might try to undercut her command in ways no JAG officer could. They had arrived on the same shuttle, and were, rather conspicuously, not talking to one another. Not a good sign. Mikhailovich was about a decade older than her, but still young for his rank, a pleasant looking man in his late thirties, he kept himself fit, in a navy sort of way.

His wedding ring was a black titanium band, traditional for widowers. He certainly looked every inch the naval officer though he wasn’t looking around the, admittedly somewhat dingy, corridors of the _Mindoir_ * with any disdain, unlike some of the naval crew they’d had on board to give the modified cargo hauler a once-over. That scored him a few points. Spit-and-polish mattered, they really did, keeping both visitors and crew in the right frame of mind. This was a military vessel, it was not and it would not become just another Terminus gang. But spit-and-polish was at the bottom of her list and she was pleased to see that it was at the bottom of his as well.

_* Project Overwatch was renaming all the ships assigned to it. Since they didn’t fall neatly into any of the pre-existing ship classes, none of the usual naming rules applied. There had been some suggesting that they not change the names of the ships, however two facts ruled against this. The first was that, though the superstitious might have believed that changing a ship’s name was bad luck, Shepard was not a superstitious person (and for those who were, she was happy to point out that the superstition was that changing the name got rid of any luck the ships had, and any ship crewed by slavers, then captured by the Alliance could only have bad luck to lose). The second reason was that no one, not even the most superstitious naval crewman, wanted to serve onboard the SSV Bitchbuster. Pirates and slavers, it turned out, did not have the best taste in names. Rather than choose anything creative and thus potentially politically troublesome, Shepard had decided to name the ships after Alliance colonies, with a preference for those which had been attacked by the forces they’d been sent to stop._

All-in-all, she was favorably inclined towards the naval officer. Turning her attention to the JAG officer, she frowned slightly to see him wearing a good, though not particularly expensive, civilian suit. This wasn’t entirely improper for a JAG officer,* but most wore uniforms, if only so they didn’t stand out.

 _*JAG Officers, though provided with some training, were outside the usual chain of command, instead acting as advisors. No one wanted to drop the problem of dealing with a disaster_ and _a senior surviving officer who was a_ lawyer _on some poor senior NCO._

Not that it was the suit that made the man stand out. Long and lean, he was built like a runner and kept himself in better shape than the captain, though she’d wager she could pound him into the dirt (though not, perhaps run him into it, depending on the circumstances). The right side of his face was quite attractive, but the left was a ruin of scars. Metal flashed under his skin where repairs had been made. The scars themselves were confined to a rectangular patch comprising most of the area from his cheekbone to his jawline. His eyes, spared the damage were a startling light green that stood out sharply from his darkly tanned skin. Lighter than her, though darker then Mikhailovich, he stood calmly as Shepard approached, studying her as thoroughly as she’d studied him.

She saluted sharply, waited for her salutes to be returned, then leapt in without bothering with the niceties. Studying their files had eaten much of her day, but it was necessary. The other officers would necessarily owe her their positions. If trouble was going to arise, then it would come from these two. She needed to get a firm handle on them. “Captain Mikhailovich, what would you say our first step should be?”

The older man smiled at the question, looking to take control of the situation, just as Shepard was. “Well, I would say that the first thing to do is to head for Japor. It’s a central location which would permit us to—“

“Wrong,” Shepard interrupted. The area was empty of anyone but the three of them. She’d gone to some trouble to arrange that. It was necessary to ensure everyone understood the pecking order, it wasn’t, yet, necessary to make lifetime enemies of two extremely competent officers, nor to destroy their credibility with what crew the ships already had.* “Our first step is to hurt our enemy in order both to prove to everyone that we can and to _hurt our enemy_.”

_*Mostly volunteers from the ad-hoc Elysium relief forces. Shepard intended to keep the skeleton crews the ships had lifted with, unless Mikhailovich had a very good reason not to do so, as they came with high recommendations from officers who she owed her life to._

Mikhailovich gaped at her for a moment. “So, how would you have us hurt the enemy?” she continued.

“Well…” the silence stretched and he began to flush angrily as he racked his brain for a method to attack an enemy that generally lacked bases, colonies or fixed positions of any sort (at least, as far as the Alliance knew). The exceptions were well outside the capacity of four ships to deal with. An attack on Omega, for instance would just be a relatively painful way of committing suicide. At least at the moment.

As his anger grew, Shepard spoke. “Good man. Take a moment to think about it,” she turned to face Hassan. “Officer Hassan Al-Jilani, welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, taking the hand she extended to him. Her grip was crushing and his runner’s build and training did not equip him to match her pressure for pressure, but he didn’t wince.

“Good god man,” she stared at his scars, “for a man whose name means ‘handsome’ you look like shit. How’d you get that scar?” Of course, she knew the answer to that question, but his record indicated a man who’d been famous, or at least as famous as JAG officers got. She needed to know if he was bitter, and more critically, she was attacking what of their strengths she could, as she lacked the knowledge to attack Hassan’s legal skill.

“Thresher maw venom, sir. And yours?” he asked, running a finger along his face, tracking the same path as her brand new scar.

“Shrapnel. I didn’t know that Thresher Maws spat in rectangles,” Shepard noted as she traced the pattern of his scars on her own face.

“Oh, they don’t. Their spit is acid. I caught some. It melted through my helmet, but I didn’t have any sort of basic solution to counteract the acidity of the spit, so I had to cut it off. Ruined a perfectly good combat knife. Sergeant Khadi would still be giving me shit about that. If she hadn’t died about ten minutes later.”

Shepard’s lip curled slightly as she tried to stare the JAG officer down, unsuccessfully. The scowl turned into a slight smile, which he mirrored. “You didn’t handle that too badly at all,” she said.

“Thank you, sir. May I suggest not testing other people in that fashion? I’d prefer not to end up trying to defend you from charges of harassment,” his smile broadened slightly. “If you make me defend you at the MJ-CRC,* then I’ll find a way to make you pay, I promise.”

_*Military Justice-Civil Rights Court._

“No promises,” Shepard said with a grin of her own. “Now, Captain, have you had time to think?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been considering the problem. Ships can be seized, or purchased legitimately. People can be recruited, or hired from mercenary groups. People can be equipped easily enough in a universe awash with guns. However ship-to-ship weapons are generally tightly controlled and installing them isn’t something you can do on your own. A spacedock is needed. What I would do to hurt them is find out who’s selling the weapons and who’s installing the weapons and either take them out, or take them over.”

Shepard thought about it for a second then nodded. “That hadn’t occurred to me. I tend to think too much on the dirtside. It’s a good idea. You have any idea where that would be?”

“No, sir.”

“Then we’ll just have to keep a sharp eye out for information when we hit Loki.”

“Loki, sir?” Mikhailovich said.

“A moon in close orbit around a gas giant near the Batarian border, an easy FTL trip. It’s one of the main transfer points between the Terminus pirates and the Hegemony, because the radiation the gas giant pumps out screws with sensors. There’s a small, shielded facility on the ground where the pirates leave their slaves and the Batarians show up later on ‘routine patrol’ to pick them up, then leave the payment behind.”

“So, what’s the plan?”

“The first plan is to get us crewed up. You’ll handle the naval side, I’ll get us some ground forces. Then we’ll head to Loki and grab whatever’s there. If it’s the payment, then we’ll stick around and ambush the pirates when they return. If it’s the slaves, then we’ll rescue them, avoid the Batarians, then ambush the pirates when they come for their payment.”

“We’re avoiding confrontation with the Batarians?” Hassan asked, in a manner that might have appeared casual to someone who hadn’t spent their entire career dealing with people who thought she was a bloodthirsty Batarian-bashing barbarian.

“We’re avoiding a war with the Hegemony. It’s not the same thing. Besides, driving a wedge between the Hegemony and their pawns outside their own space is worth a great deal.” In fact, she thought to herself, she had an idea how to do that even better than simply stealing some money, or rescuing some slaves.

Hassan spread his hands. “Yes, sir. How do you know about Loki?”

“I’ve been gathering information about slavers since Mindoir, hoping we could find some of the others. The Alliance knows a surprising amount about them.”

“It’s never been information we lacked, it was will that _was_ missing,” Mikhailovich snapped.

“ _Was_ missing, indeed,” Shepard agreed. “Now, let’s get crewed up, Al-Jilani—“

“Hassan, please.”

Shepard did not invite him to use her first name. “Hassan, do whatever needs doing to get us able to legally go into the Terminus systems.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shepard turned sharply, “Commander?” Mikhailovich said.

“Yes, Mikhailovich?” she asked, deliberately not using his higher rank.

“You said that we should be proving we _can_ hurt the enemy—“

“But Loki will need to be a covert operation, or at least one for which we cannot claim credit,” Shepard finished.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s why you’ll be taking the _Eden, Anhur,_ and _Bekenstein_ to deal with Loki, while I take the _Mindoir_ to be rather more visible.” Mikhailovich opened his mouth, but Shepard held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you have a very competent Marine commander to handle things downside.” He opened his mouth again. “And where I’m going, I won’t need naval command, I promise you that.”

* * *

## 2177 CE Refueling Station Huuuge

Justicar Samara had not prayed since she swore her oaths. Nor did she pray now. Some part of her may have wished that she did not come across anything which would require her intervention while crossing the station to where her target’s ship was located. Tracking him hadn’t been particularly difficult, as he relied upon word of mouth advertising to get him his clients. Parte Divi was a Salarian born in the Terminus, he’d gained admission to a Citadel university, graduating with honors in Electrical Engineering. Funded by various investors looking to buy a piece of the next great mind, he’d instead absconded back to the Terminus with their money.

Now he made his way by selling specialty goods, especially tech weapons, to a select, and criminal, clientele. He provided basic engineering services to Captain T’par, in exchange for travelling with the Asari ‘trader.’ Samara was not aware of any evidence that T’par was a criminal, but as a ship captain in the Terminus, it seemed likely. It seemed even more likely that she wasn’t going to let Samara drag off her engineer without a fight.

Despite her desire not to see anything, her eyes kept up their usual probing stare as she walked through the corridors of the station. The ship which had given her a lift had not stayed to refuel, preferring to head for a more reputable station. Not that the Huuuge didn’t have a reputation, it simply wasn’t a good one.

Long ago, a ship had set up next to the refueling station, acting as a brothel/eatery. More hulks had slowly joined the first, until the ad-hoc station floated near the refueling station, permitting the visiting ships to sample every pleasure the Terminus Systems could offer.

The station wasn’t heavily armed, but the weapon batteries of each ship was slaved together under the control of the Krogan known only as the Stationmaster. Altogether, the weapons were sufficient to see off any shipside assault. Attempts to blackmail the Stationmaster by threatening to pound the station to dust from beyond the range of the station’s weapons had met with a stoic refusal to care, because he had his own escape craft. Attempts to attack from within the station itself had all failed when the Stationmaster either butchered everyone involved, or simply closed the door and threatened to vent the station unless everyone got out.

The halls were always busy with people visiting the various entertainments the station offered, and stained with fluids which suggested they saw use beyond merely transporting healthy people. There were, however, more Humans than Samara would have expected.

Everywhere she went she saw a few of them, sticking together, sensibly, as even with the expanded Human numbers, they were outnumbered and plenty of people in the Terminus resented the newest sapient species and their arrogant claim of the Traverse for themselves. The Batarians especially were giving the Humans ugly looks, as only a species with four eyes could manage. Turians likewise eyed the humans suspiciously, while the Asari maidens were examining them with the curious eyes of Asari maidens seeing a species they hadn’t merged with, yet, while the brothel keeper’s eyed them in a way which said they hadn’t been paid, yet.

The Humans, in turn, stared at everyone with undisguised hostility, made worse by the fact that they were wearing civilian body armor* and carrying weapons. Their clothing was a solid blue, standard utilities that the crew of any ship might have been wearing, but for their weapons and their reflexes. These were no mere traders, but that did not make them stand out I this crowd.

_*Hardsuits rather stand out in a board meeting, and yet executives still desired protection from snipers, so light body armor could be built into regular clothing, as could shield generators. It was unusual to have such installed on crew uniforms, but it wasn’t as expensive as equipping everyone with hardsuits. Moreover, it permitted people who couldn’t wear hardsuits and do their jobs, to have some combat effectiveness._

One of the Turians got in her way. Samara stopped. “Yes?”

She leered at Samara, who could smell the drink coming off her in waves. “How much?”

“My affection is not for sale. Stand aside.”

“Come on, blue,” a clawed hand closed on Samara’s shoulder “I just got my share from selling a full shipload of Palladium that we boosted. I’m real flush right now, just name your price.”

“Boosted? Any trouble with that?” she asked.

“Nah, beautiful, it was just some Volus miners. Even a pistol and they just pop like a balloon.”

“Did you pop any?” her voice was soothing, calm, as if the answer was of no importance to her, but the Turian’s eyes widened anyway.

She thought she’d placed Samara now, Asari who liked bad girls and danger. Hardly a unique type, but few had Samara’s figure, so why not play it up? “Oh, yeah, babe, I took out three of the little rollers.”

Samara’s hands came up, glowing blue and caught the Turian’s head between the two biotic strikes, crushing her skull with a single movement.

Everyone stared at her, in shock, not reacting. Except, Samara’s trained and experienced eyes noted, the Humans, who’d closed up ranks, three surrounding the oldest of their party, weapons in their hands, behind the best cover they could find, which was an ugly couch. The oldest of their lot was already talking into her omni-tool. That was…interesting, but Samara couldn’t waste time with that, she had work to do, as news of this might spook her target.

“This was a just execution in accordance with the Code, for the crime of murder, which she confessed.”

The Asari in the crowd blanched, two started to duck back before being grabbed by their fellows. It was _not_ true, as so many maidens believed these days, that fleeing from a justicar would force her to chase you down, but it was still not a good idea. A Volus, flanked by a pair of flamethrower-wielding Vorcha was speaking urgently into his com. Samara heard the word ‘Stationmaster,’ and did not curse, or even regret the fact that this was doubtless going to end with her having to fight the ancient Krogan. She would take what came, in accordance with the Code.

Without another word, she continued heading towards her target’s ship. Everyone hastened to get out of her way, except for a trio of Turians, clearly comrades of the one whose brains were now coating the floor. An Asari matron intervened before they could do anything. “Out of the Justicar’s way, idiots, or you’re banned for life,” the matron’s gaze flicked over Samara, for a moment with a natural attraction masking terror, but then she registered what she’d said and the terror came to the forefront as she continued, “from my…bakery.”

The Turians moved out of her path, more because of the terror with which the woman whose clothing proclaimed her a brothel keeper and who moved with the grace of a woman who’d been through commando training, treated Samara. “Prostitution is no crime under the Code,” Samara informed the woman, who began to relax. “Lying is.”

The woman froze and Samara walked towards her. Despite her undoubted and undoubtable profession, she was enough of an Asari not to run from a justicar, but rather to accept her judgement. Her stride never broke as she passed the woman, but she spoke in the same calm monotone which she always used. “It is good, therefore, that I do not _know_ you do not own a bakery,” she said to the world at large, before advancing towards her goal.

There were whispers behind her, but there were always whispers behind her. Neither instinct, nor hearing detected anything suggesting that they would attempt to shoot her in the back and Samara’s shields were strong, her jumpsuit armored, and she’d been shot before. It never killed her before. And, of course, nothing which did not kill her could turn her from her path. The Code was her path now, and until death.

She was unsurprised when she came out into an open space, a cargo bay repurposed to act as a bar to find her way blocked by a massive Krogan, flanked by more than a dozen other sapients. A relatively unusual mixture of Turian and Batarian pirates flanked him, in full hardsuits, though there was a pair of Humans in the same suits she’d seen before standing behind them. One, clearly a bodyguard, was as heavily armed as any of the pirates, an assault rifle cradled in her hands, with a shotgun holstered in the small of her back. The other was the one being guarded.

“Justicar!” the Krogan bellowed, stepping forward, massive hammer swinging easily between his hands then up to his shoulder.

“Yes?” Samara asked, as if facing a dozen pirates was nothing unusual, because facing a dozen pirates was nothing unusual.

“Ha!” the Krogan turned back to the Human, “I told you so!”

“So you did,” the Human stepped forward and slapped the Krogan on the back, “now let’s see if you were as right when you told me how you would kill her.” The man retreated back to his bodyguard giving them plenty of room to resolve this.

In her experience, the others would hold back, either to let the Stationmaster have his fun, or because they wanted her to kill him. That was the natural consequence of dealing with criminals. The Krogan himself should not be too difficult, he’d want to close to use his hammer. Though his strength meant that even the immense weight of the hammer could be handled with relative ease, she’d fought enough Krogan wielding such hammers to know that even for Krogan, they were awkward and slow weapons. They relied upon their immense strength and resilience to endure until they could land a blow, because if they landed even a single blow, the fight would be over.

In Samara’s experience, it was not a difficult matter to simply to avoid hits long enough to blind the Krogan with a pair of biotic strikes which would burst their eyeballs, then follow that up with the precisely aimed series of strikes which would burst both hearts, preferably before the blood rage hyper-charged their regeneration.

As she mentally ran through the battle to come, the Krogan stepped forward and exploded.

Admittedly, that did surprise Samara. It surprised everyone else too, except for the Humans. The bodyguard tossed the assault rifle to the one who’d spoken, then drew her shotgun. They opened fire on the criminals, gunning them down quickly. Surprised they may have been, but they were experienced enough to turn on their attackers, which only exposed their backs to Samara’s SMG and biotics.

Trapped between the two groups, taken completely by surprise and with their supposedly invincible leader scattered in flaming pieces over the deck, the pirates were rapidly eliminated. Samara turned to face the Humans who had so suddenly turned on what she had assumed were her allies. The guarded one must have placed a grenade on the Krogan’s back when he’d congratulated the big Krogan.

What he had done was not in doubt, but the question of why would determine the appropriate response under the Code. Was this an attempt at a coup? Vengeful murder? Political assassination? Execution? Any of these seemed possible and all required the correct response. It would not do to execute these, believing them mere murderers and leave those who had hired what were, in truth, assassins, free to continue their criminality.

As Samara decided how to phrase her question in a manner which would produce the information she needed, the bodyguard brought her shotgun to bear on the justicar. Instinct brought up a powerful **barrier** , but before the Human could fire, the guarded one, with his scarred face, slid between the two of them, and placed the rifle on the ground, careful not to clear his bodyguard for a shot. “Honored Justicar, this was no murder, but a legitimate ruse of war.”

Samara’s eyes narrowed. “I do not recognize your uniform. Which badge, if any, do you wear?” This was a crucial question to determining her response. Rarely invoked portions of the Code laid out the punishments for warriors who fought without revealing the badge of their matriarch. It was part of the Justicar’s duty to see that war was not prosecuted in that fashion, for to do so could lead to horrific misunderstandings and mistaken war.

“I am an officer of the Systems Alliance. This is a standard utility uniform,” he explained, shifting position in accordance with the movements of Samara’s eyes, tracking the bodyguard who was trying to clear the blockage of the alleged officer’s body in order to have a clear line of sight on the justicar. The ‘officer’ kept himself in the way, much to the young Human woman’s evident distress. The bodyguard had handled her weapons well, with the ease of a veteran, despite her youth.

Samara had no desire to distress the woman and the man clearly wanted to talk, so she put away the SMG. Clearly aware of Samara’s biotic abilities, whether from the battle she’d just witnessed (though that would have displayed impressive situational awareness during a very stressful situation) or from the general reputation of Asari in general or justicars in particular, Samara couldn’t tell, the bodyguard obviously knew that the lack of a gun did not render Samara unarmed, and so did not relax. “It is duly registered with the Citadel as a uniform indicating that those wearing it are combatants, not civilians.”

“Even if so, this tactic is most dishonorable,” Samara noted, mostly to see how the Humans would react.

The man tilted his head in a way which indicated curiosity in both Asari and Humans. “Is the honor of those who do not follow the Code a concern of a Justicar?”

Samara’s head tilted far more shallowly, but it did tilt, surprise slipping into her body-language. “It is not. I am…surprised to find a Human with knowledge of the Code.” It was not a question. She had no right to an answer to the source of his knowledge, but she would admit to curiosity at the unusual knowledge.

The man smiled slightly. “No more than I am surprised to find a justicar here.” Samara nodded, duly chastened for her curiosity, but the man continued, “I am a student of the law. After a guest lecture at the University of Thessia, Solaria, School of Law, I had the opportunity to speak with Matriarch L’va, who spoke at some length about the Code of the Justicars. She was very curious about cross-cultural matches, alas, I was unable to provide her any.”

“Perhaps a knight-errant would have been the appropriate analogy,” she suggested with a small smile of her own.

“I am…surprised to find an Asari with such knowledge of Human history,” he said, deliberately mimicking her own earlier phrase.

“I am a student of peoples. How else might I know how best to pursue those who break the Code? How else to attempt to convince others to follow the Code?”

That was not an answer, but the man accepted it as such. “I see.”

“In order for this to be a legitimate ruse of war, you must be at war,” Samara pointed out mildly.

The tone did not fool either bodyguard, or officer (and she was quite sure he was an officer, now). The former tensed, the later deliberately relaxed, attempting to minimize the degree to which he appeared to be a threat. Clearly his knowledge of justicars was incomplete. Her actions would be driven by his, not by the degree to which he did, or did not appear dangerous.

“I am an officer of Project Overwatch, commanded by the Systems Alliance to offer aid and comfort to those peaceful colonies of the Traverse and Terminus which do not bow to either the Alliance, or the Citadel Council, though of course, all who do the former, necessarily do the later, simply through the Alliance.”

Samara did not agree with that statement, nor did she nod, as either would have been to endorse an exaggeration. When he waited for a response, she spoke noncommittally, “I understand your words. However, this is neither aid, nor comfort,” she let one elegant hand wave over the destruction.

“Indeed not. The second part of our ordered task, openly broadcast to all who care to listen, was to eliminate the threat of pirates and slavers who have so recently attempted to seize our kin and colonies,” his language and tone were formal and she realized he was speaking as if he was in court, as if he was in an _Asari_ court. Not a fool, he’d picked up much of the anachronistic and even archaic elements. Asari court systems could trip up students as they were judged by Matriarchs. It was familiar, but it bought him nothing. The justicars stood outside the Asari courts, they enforced the Code, not the law.

“And these were such? You are sure?”

“We are sure that these have acted as pirates. We are sure they have sold information and weapons. We are sure that they have purchased and sold Alliance citizens, as well as citizens of the Republics. Or were willingly in the service of such as armed marauders. I can provide evidence, if you would like to see it.” Samara paused, considering the question. “Of course, regardless, I heard that one,” the man pointed at the largest bit of the Krogan still intact, his armored hump, “state that he intended to murder you, an idea his fellows expressed great support for, though most of them preferred for your death to come only after prolonged suffering.”

“Sufficient,” the man relaxed and so, perforce, did the bodyguard, as Humans were pack creatures. It was then that Samara spoke again, “And yet, I wonder why you call it a ruse of war, if it is merely defense of another.” It was not a question, nor, quite, an interrogation, yet. The man wound right back up, then tried to force relaxation, which the bodyguard saw and did not mimic. This was not the tension of approaching combat, this was the anxiety brought on by the realization of an error. Samara was all too familiar with that feeling, her lips quirked in unconscious sympathy, before smoothing back down into the calm mask of a justicar.

The intercom, usually whispering rather vile and occasionally incomprehensible advertisements at a volume only barely audible, screamed to life so loudly that the bodyguard dove into cover, bringing her weapon up to point at the speaker hidden in the wall, though she did not fire. Samara’s instincts had screamed at her to do the same, but her instincts were firmly under her own control. The man, by contrast had just glanced up. In Samara’s view that wasn’t because he’d known it was coming, which meant that he either possessed the same self-possession she’d gained in centuries of following the Code, or he lacked the training and experience which sent the bodyguard into cover the instant the unexpected occurred. All this passed through her thoughts in the instant before words started to pour from the speakers.

“Attention. This is Lieutenant-Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance Project Overwatch. We have control of the station, including its weapon systems. If you are not a pirate, then you have nothing to fear. If you are a pirate, I advise you to surrender. Those who surrender will be turned over to the Systems Alliance for trial. The worst punishment they have is a long term of imprisonment where you’ll be fed, sheltered and well treated. If you fail to surrender, I and mine will show you more mercy than was shown to my kin and colony of Mindoir and kill you quickly. Any ship attempting to lift will be treated as a resisting pirate. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO UNDOCK, OR YOU WILL BE DESTROYED. This message will repeat every five minutes until all docked ships acknowledge receipt.”

The man’s eyes closed for a moment, gratefully as the tension melted out of his body. “Well, I trust that answers your question?”

“Boss must have got Johnnie’s message to move up the time-table,” the bodyguard said, coming out of cover with a flush of embarrassment on her cheeks.

“And he must have been able to hold the bridge, even though we had to leave him to do it alone,” the man agreed.

“Duh, he’s N5.”

“Captain T’Par of the _Matriarchs’ Folly_ is sheltering the criminal I am here seeking. Do you, or yours, intend to attempt to interfere with my task?” Samara interrupted before they could devolve into bickering like the children which, to her thousand year old eyes, they were.

“Of course not. If you have no objection, we will escort you, just to avoid any confusion?” the man suggested.

“As you like.”

The walk was swift because the corridors were mostly empty, as the station’s inhabitants had chosen to keep their heads down, rather than argue with the heavily armed Humans moving in orderly groups. The second and third groups they passed were wearing full military level hardsuits, in the blue and white of Systems Alliance, though Samara noticed a small stylized red eyeball patch they all wore on their shoulder and that some of them, the ones who looked the most dangerous, had similar patterns painted on their armor. Samara had studied human history, society and psychology, but all her studies had been in Asar,* she knew nothing of any of the Human languages, except that they were many and varied, which had resulted in historical confusion.

 _*Unlike Humanity, the intensely social Asari had a planetary language very early in their development. That language, Asar, was the most widely spoken language in the galaxy. Though some colonies subsequently lost contact with Thessia and developed distinct languages, and there has been significant linguistic drift with many distinct variants and accents arising, the vast majority of Asari will understand Asar._

“Is the red eye insignia the mark of your leader?” Samara asked, as she might, as they were no longer suspects, but merely people she was speaking to. Though, of course, they might become suspects again, depending on the interaction of their unpredictable actions and the constant of the Code.

The man laughed slightly, “It is the sign of Project Overwatch. Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, it’s sort of a joke.”

“Oh?” Samara asked, raising an eyebrow as if humor was an odd thing done by lower life forms.

“It comes from an old series of games, pre-First Contact, depicting a Human force defending Earth from alien invaders. Lieutenant Suorsa, was one of the Commander’s first choices for Project Overwatch and is a huge fan of the game series. She got most of the rest of the first round of recruits addicted to it. Overwatch is also a defensive maneuver in the game, symbolized by the all-seeing eye. It’s not an official insignia, but it is an informal one for Project Overwatch.”

“Ah,” Samara nodded. Such things were actually quite common among the relatively loose unit affiliations that made up the less professional elements of the Asari military, where command was based on personal respect rather than any hierarchical appointment. “Such things are common amongst the Asari. Having skilled combatants under the command of less skilled combatants is far less common, at least at the operational level,” she added, remembering the combat capabilities, or incapabilities of many of the Matriarchs she had met.

The point was delicately made, to avoid pricking his pride, if possible. He laughed. “Oh, I’m not in command of Jennie,” he waved at the bodyguard, “or any of the rest of them, certainly not any of the N-series.”

“N-series?”

“Special Operations soldiers, or officers in her case. Whereas I am an A-Series,* attorney, a JAG officer.” Samara looked at him in confusion. “Judge Advocate General,” her confusion remained, “I’m the lawyer for this operation.”

_*The Vocational Code List, was created by the JAG office, with input from other agencies. This may explain why there are three codes for JAG members: A-Attorney, J-Judge, L-Legal Support, while there’s only two for essentially the entirety of the Marine Corps: B-Marine-Garrison (“Boots on the Ground), F-Marine-Assigned to a Naval Vessel (“Flyers”), with a smattering of other specialties, most notably, the N-Special Operations (“No Such Vocational Code”) series._

“Ah. If I may ask, why would a lawyer have been sent to assassinate the Stationmaster?”

“He wasn’t,” the bodyguard said. “He was just supposed to use his lawyer bullshit to get us onto the bridge and keep us there, while the rest of us were supposed to open the door to the bridge so the snatch team could handle things, but then some crazy justicar showed up and killed someone and the Stationmaster got all excited about facing a worthy enemy, _before_ our snatch team was in place, forcing the Commander to accelerate her carefully laid plans. Thanks for that, by the way,” she said, voice thick with sarcasm.

“You are welcome,” Samara said, as if she’d missed the sarcasm.

Before the bodyguard could respond to that, they arrived at the airlock to which the _Matriarchs’ Folly_ was docked. The airlock opened at the man’s command sent through the bridge. The ship-side of the airlock was unlocked and unguarded, which was bizarre in any port, and downright inexplicable on a station as dangerous as Huuuge.

“Do you know where we’re going?” the man asked as they stepped into the corridor. 

“I believe so,” Samara said, leading them towards the main engineering section. She stepped inside, saw a Salarian working at a console, completely ignoring them and said, “Parte Divi?”

The Salarian turned, “Yes?” he asked.

“I am Justicar Samara, you—“

His hand came up and Samara instinctively strengthened her barriers as the bodyguard dove for cover and the lawyer stood there dumbly. However, the tech attack the Salarian launched bypassed her barriers altogether and she convulsed as fire flared behind her eyes, pain erupting, muscles twitching and sending her to the floor after a few moments of body wracking agony. The pain from the tech attack was so overwhelming she couldn’t scream and didn’t feel the impact of her face hitting the metal deck.

The man beside her was undergoing the same process, at a somewhat more rapid pace as he lacked her inherent resiliency. The Salarian drew a heavy pistol and walked forward, muttering to himself about the effectiveness of a **neural shockwave** on both biotic enemies and closely packed groups.

The bodyguard didn’t break cover in the face of an unknown and unexpected tech attack, but she did stick her rifle over the top of the console she’d hidden behind and unloaded on the advancing Salarian. Several unaimed shots sparked off shields Samara hadn’t seen as she began to push herself back up to all fours. The Salarian glanced in the direction of the hidden woman and launched a second tech attack from his omni-tool. The console overloaded, sending out bursts of electricity, frying the bodyguard’s shields and sending her sprawling to the ground.

The Salarian grinned to himself, “Fight me on my own ground, will you? Idiots, everyone’s so stupid, so slow, so—“

Samara pushed herself forward, turning a crawl into a sprinter’s crouch, then a lunge forward, closing the distance between them as he turned to look back towards his original victims. The man was still sprawled on the ground, twitching intermittently, as Samara slammed into the Salarian, driving the small amphibian back into a metal wall. His unarmored head hit metal, propelled by all the force her armored body could generate, and he went limp under her hands, not unconscious limp, but dead limp, a fact confirmed by a delicate sniff as the criminal’s cloaca relaxed.

Samara pushed herself slowly to her feet and walked back towards the fallen Humans. They were already stirring, merely stunned by the sudden attack. “The criminal is dead,” she informed them, drawing a politely sociable congratulations from the lawyer and a bitterly annoyed acknowledgement from the bodyguard, who proceeded to strip the omni-tool from the Salarian’s corpse, ‘for their techs’ she said.

Before Samara could complete a review of the Code sufficient to know if there were any problems with that, the lawyer interrupted from the chair he was occupying (as he still wasn’t steady enough on his feet to trust them). “Did you get everything you needed?”

“Not quite. He had access to certain information he should not have had. I need to know where he got that.”

“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you killed him!” the bodyguard snapped.

“We have engineers, I’ll ask the Commander to assign someone to get into the files. We’ll lock down the ship until we can get someone up here to examine the files,” the man put in.

Samara turned towards the other door a moment before it opened revealing a matronly Asari and the entirety of her crew behind her. That explained why the entrance was unguarded, they’d been meeting up to discuss what to do about the sudden change in circumstance. The failure to lock the airlock was pretty embarrassing, but perhaps they’d assumed that anyone trying to break in would have enough omni-gel to simply override the lock. “No, you won’t!” the Asari, who had to be Captain T’Par, shouted.

Before Samara could exercise her authority as a justicar, the man spoke from the chair, “You were really standing in the hallway waiting for a good line to enter on? Seriously?”

The captain blushed a darker blue, “Hey! I wanted to know what I was walking into! And I don’t have to answer to you murderers!”

Samara stepped forward slowly, giving the other Asari time to take in her appearance, bearing and gear. When she was three steps away, the suspected smuggler’s eyes widened and she knelt instantly, eyes lowered submissively to the floor. “Justicar, I apologize. I do not have the codes to Parte’s files, but we will provide you with any other assistance we can in discovering what this man who abused my _innocent_ hospitality was up to.”

Samara nodded, “Thank you for your assistance,” she said, turning her back on them to see where the Humans waited, Jennie with her weapon raised to cover her retreat and the man with his hands folded behind his back, though the angle wasn’t right for them to be clasped behind his back in a posture of parade rest as they almost appeared to be. As Samara passed between them, she didn’t move her head to glance at either of them, but her eyes flickered and she let her peripheral vision focus on the man’s hands to see a pair of grenades clutched therein.

They vanished a moment later as he fell in to flank her, while his bodyguard walked backwards behind them, weapon never coming off the armed crewmen at Samara’s back and made sure to keep herself and her shields between the crew and the lawyer.

“I thank you for your assistance as well,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome.”

“You do understand that this will not gain you anything. I will act in accordance with the Code regardless of any personal debt.”

“I understand.”

“Then, if I may ask, why the assistance? You are no Asari, raised on tales of justicars.”

“Several reasons. Most crucially, as this was the first operation of Project Overwatch, it needed to be successful. A powerful third party wandering around could have endangered that success, unless you understood exactly what the situation was. The possibility of cultural confusion resulting in conflict was significant.”

“It is true that some have failed to understand the Code, even when it is explained to them in their own language,” Samara noted. “And the other reasons?”

“Your Code is…harsh, but it does not encompass crimes which are not recognized as such any longer, like blasphemy in our older legal systems, for instance. So, anyone you are hunting, has committed a crime we would recognize as such. Given that it brought you here, far from Asari space, that person was either extremely dangerous, or had committed terrible crimes, which also might interfere with our operation.”

“That’s the same reason,” Samara noted.

He smirked, “So it was, just from a different angle and with a different third party. The other reason, I’ve been attempting to avoid, is that this action was also chosen because it will be highly visible. Gaining the support of a justicar would also be a highly visible statement in the righteousness of our action. As well as its…practical benefits.”

He stopped, rather than oversell the argument. They walked in silent back towards the cheapest hotel on the station, as Samara would need lodgings while the Humans gathered the files she needed. “I will consider your words,” the man opened his mouth, “and evaluate how you handle this station.”

She did not add the warning she usually would have included regarding the consequences if she concluded that their actions transgressed the Code. It was clear he already knew that, which was why he was walking so very, very nervously around her. This was not fear bred by children’s tales or superstition. This was the caution of a man dealing with someone who he knew would, if necessary, kill him with neither hesitation, nor regret.

That fact made so many people so uncomfortable that the offer to work together was a rare and potentially attractive one. It would be interesting to see what they could find in the files and what they would tell her they found in the files. It would be her duty to see how they treated those they had conquered. But the idea of travelling with honorable fighters who did not flinch at her approach, her eyes flicked over the Humans, that was tempting indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments always welcome.


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutting off strings is one thing the Reapers are good at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t own Blake’s 7, alas, alas.

## 253.25 NC Journey’s End, Capital City of Destiny

“I give you the man who saved ourselves, our children, our world, Dr.,” the announcer winked at the camera, “hopefully soon to be Governor, Kendall!” the applause was overwhelming as Kendall walked out from behind her into view of the camera, wearing the lighter, stylish clothing his campaign advisors had insisted on, all ruffles and cuffs. He could barely move in the damn stuff, let alone get any actual work done, but it did look good, which his expected new job insisted upon. Political clothing did not permit one to sit down, so interviews happened standing up, with both parties leaning on elaborate, hand-carved podiums.

“Thank you Alise, for that kind introduction, but this isn’t a campaign stop,” that was a flat out lie, but a believable one, mostly, “but rather an announcement that the last of our crop is in, and there’s no sign of the fungus, that sent the brave crew of the _Ortega_ offworld to buy the neurotrope! Our problems are solved!” that last has been a subject of severe debate amongst his advisors as many of them wanted him to state that he’d solved their problems, others thought that it was too over the top, the compromise, of giving credit to the crew of the _Ortega_ , not mentioning that he’d been their leader, was a good one.

“What about the debt?” Alise asked, with a professional frown of concern.

“With the crops in, we’ve been able to keep up with payments, I anticipate once we’ve had a few crops we’ll be able to negotiate a lower interest rate, but make no mistake, we’ve mortgaged our children’s future to buy this chance and we will all have to work to redeem that,” he said portentously.

“And the rumors that the banks plan to call in the loans early?” she asked, very off script.

“That is simply impossible, I reviewed those contracts personally. There are no acceleration clauses,” which was entirely true. What was less clear was whether a Federation bank could convince a Federation court that there were such clauses, regardless of what a bunch of provincials, not even part of the Federation said. And, even more to the point, what a Federation bank could convince the Federation military to do to such a bunch of barely armed provincials, regardless of contract law. That kept everyone who’d dealt with the Federation up at night.

“Good to hear for all of us. Now, we’ve been hearing rumors about some sort of military movement within the Federation itself, do you know anything about that?”

“The Federation is always at war with someone, but we provide a great deal of the food their military uses,” better not to give specifics, as 3% didn’t sound like much, until you considered how much a galaxy-spanning military consumed, “Conquering us would interfere with their food supply. Whatever they’re doing, it’s not aimed at us,” which was absolutely true, because everyone in the know knew that the Federation wouldn’t have to mobilize to conquer Destiny, as the few popguns they had to keep off raiders wouldn’t stop a single pursuit ship, let alone one of the battlegroups they could dispatch with a word. “We have nothing to fear.”

And because the God the Federation denied hates it when people say things like that, a massive explosion blew in the window the mere moment he finished speaking those words. It knocked him flat, ears ringing, a sharp pain in his back as glass shot slid through his expensive clothing. For the first time since he’d discovered _Alise in the Morning_ used sound-effects rather than the live, studio audience they claimed to use, he was grateful to find the room empty. Except for the cameraman and Alise. Kendall remembered their existence about the time his hand probing around behind his back found a lengthy shard of glass embedded in it.

He swore vilely, remembered the camera might be live and slowly pushed himself to all fours looking around for the others, but they weren’t in his line of sight. The glass hurt like hell, but he knew better than to remove it, so long as it was in there, it was blocking the blood loss which might put him in a very back position. He had to rip his politician suit to make it back to his feet and glanced around. Alise was clearly dead, shrapnel through the back of her head and neck, a pool of blood under her, but the blood had stopped flowing when her heart had stopped.

The cameraman was screaming, or so Dr. Kendall presumed as his mouth was open and he was weeping, but whatever had happened to Kendall’s ears was keeping him from hearing anything except the unpleasant ringing and a touch to his ear confirmed blood oozing from them. He closed in on the camera-man, running his eyes over the man, cataloguing an impressive list of injuries. He wished for the first time since his mother’s death that he was a medical doctor, rather than a stellar physicist.

On the other hand, he’d had some first aid training before being sent out on the _Ortega_. His hands moved quickly, binding up the few bleeding wounds and holding him still, keeping him from jarring the visible break in his left arm, where the bone was protruding out of the skin. The cameraman passed out before Kendall could hear anything, but it took a few minutes more to finish treating the man to the best of his ability. With that done, he pulled out his comm unit and tried to contact his family, going to the blown-in window as he dialed his home number, where they should be at this moment.

Finally taking a moment to look out the window he saw the city was on fire. Some ridiculous part of him jabbered about how difficult it was going to be to make the loan payments and pay to rebuild the colony. The massive box-like ships descending, too large to land on a planet, but landing on a planet despite this simple fact of physics, were very definitely not Federation vessels. He stared as a casual blast from one of the small turrets on those ships took out the police station nearby, and creatures began to pour from the hatches of the ships which were already on the ground. The call wouldn’t go through, as a machine informed him all communications were down across the colony. Some part of him was glad that no one else had seen him swearing, bungling first-aid in the remnants of his ridiculous politician suit. That was insane.

As Dr. Kendall was trying to force his prodigious mind to focus, to find some way to save everyone he loved, including himself, he did not hear the door open, or the burst of weapons fire that killed him. Nor did he see the creature standing above the man he’d tried so hard to save and casually rip his throat out with clawed hands. As he was quite thoroughly dead, he never, in fact, saw, or heard, anything ever again.

He did not feel his body dragged away, or the spike slide through his body, injecting the tech that enslaved his body to the monsters who had murdered him. Nor did he feel the claws burst from his fingers, or rip through the flesh of his fellow citizens after being deployed to attack one of the outlying cities. He did not feel it when a handful of surviving government personnel implemented Operation Last Stand, Destiny’s defense strategy should the Federation invade. Melting down every fission plant on the planet, and venting their radioactive fury over the fertile fields was supposed to be mere threat to keep any invader from profiting from such invasion, now it was the final act of defiance of a dying people.

An ineffective one as none of the enemy was vulnerable to such low levels of radiation. None of those who vented the power-plants lived long enough to discover their error.

* * *

## 253.26 NC _Liberator,_ Earth

“It’s been a long time,” Blake said, staring at the viewscreen displaying the blue marble that was the birthplace of humanity, the capital and beating heart of the Federation and a thousand other things to ten billion other people.

“No, it hasn’t,” Avon replied bluntly, and honestly. It had been less than a year since Blake had led them on his raid on Control, the supposed nerve center of the Federation military. When all they had found was an ambush concealed behind that ‘supposed,’ Gan had died covering their escape.

Blake opened his mouth and Cally spoke before the rebel leader could, “I suppose it depends on your perspective.”

“An extragalactic invasion has a way of making everything before its arrival seem a lifetime ago,” Blake agreed after a moment.

Jenna nodded, stretching in the pilot’s seat she hadn’t left in the last eight hours of their patrol. Without the fuel limitations of the Federation ships, they were constantly on patrol for the enemy ships. So far they had only sent in a few scouting parties, appearing and vanishing at the edge of the gravity well, never remaining long enough to engage, not after their first attempt at an ambush had run into General Samor’s counter-ambush and been forced to retreat.* As their only skilled pilot, Jenna was spending almost all her time on the flight deck, though she was willing to let Zen handle most of the routine operations, she still felt she had to be there for when the Human touch was needed at the controls.

_*The enemy had jumped in and signaled their forces outside the system of the time it would take the patrol to arrive, then hung around, intending to ambush the arriving patrol with overwhelming force. Samor had replied by the exact same tactic, using a mobile reserve force waiting in the dark between systems, to arrive immediately after the enemy reinforcements. It was the one unadulterated victory the Federation had had in the war, though it was of minimal actual value as it was fought right on the edge of the gravity well blocking FTL travel, so when the enemy began to suffer, they simply retreated out of the gravity well and jumped away, escaping serious casualties, though the morale effect of seeing the enemy run for once was impressive._

Avon gave them all a look of infinite contempt. He’d been in a bad mood ever since his project, converting the teleport bracelets to transport explosives, had proved useless due to the energy fields surrounding the enemy ships preventing teleportation. His secondary hope of using the teleport to rip the ships apart by transporting portions of the ships’ hulls out without teleporting the remainder had failed for the same reason. This war was one problem for which there was not a technical solution, leaving their technical expert in a perpetually bad mood. He spent most of his time off with Orac, working on proving that there was a technical solution. The ongoing failure of that effort put him in a perpetually worse mood.

Vila, for his part had responded to the constant danger by retreating to the treasure room and not coming out, spending his time counting the treasure and cursing to himself about the nature of a universe which provided him with infinite wealth and no way to buy either freedom or life.

Blake was suffering the worst of all of them, as his purpose in life was to overthrow the Federation which had betrayed, imprisoned, tortured and mind controlled him and committed crimes beyond counting against others. Now forced to align with them, serve under the command of their officers, as he lacked any experience or training with fleet command. Every hour, it seemed, news came in from some colony, of invasion, extermination and defeat. Everything he’d tried to build collapsed around him as rebel groups were destroyed with the population they’d been hiding within and he dishonored their sacrifice by working with the Federation. All tied in knots, he was driving himself and everyone else onboard crazy.

Jenna was too busy to be anything but tired.

The long days passed slowly as Avon and Blake drove each other insane. Cally had tried to play peacemaker, but now she just tried to head off arguments before they started. It was easier than trying to patch them up after they’d exploded. Every soldier was used to the usual practice of hurry up and wait. Without the patience to deal with the waiting side of things, she’d have gone insane years ago. Rarely had she missed Gan’s good tempered calm more than while on the endless patrols. It was beginning to run her down as well, not the endless service, not the extreme danger, but the growing hopelessness.

Even when faced with the might of the Federation, they’d had a plan to fight back. Even when she’d been alone on Saurian Major, the last of the rebels, she’d had a plan to fight back. Sure it would have ended with her death, but it was a plan. Now they existed in stasis, awaiting death and she couldn’t come up with any plan which didn’t end with the immediate death of the billions in the Earth System.

* * *

## 253.26 NC Cephlon System

The sensors detected the rocket at long range, the only thing in an otherwise dead system. The scouts were a squadron of destroyers, far in excess of what was needed in a dead system. The question was what to do about the rocket. It was a crude, chemically propelled monstrosity, which would take centuries to arrive at its destination.

The debate was ongoing as the ships tracked the slow craft as it headed out of the system. It clearly lacked an FTL drive, meaning it would not arrive until long after the harvest was over, but it wasn’t clear if it fell within the scope of the permissible harvest, as it was an STL ship, but aimed at another star system. Finally, after endless internal debate, the _Unity_ approached the craft and simply accessed its onboard systems. Transmitting the information it gathered back to its fellows, the slightly larger than average destroyer decoupled and pulled away.

 ** _This is no threat. It’s just a terraforming rocket, none of the technology that makes this cycle so troublesome,_ **_Consensus_ argued.

 ** _But we shouldn’t allow cross-cycle contamination. That has caused trouble in the past,_ **_Concord_ countered.

 ** _Perhaps we should simply wipe the data stores, but permit it to continue on its way,_ **_Consensus_ suggested _._

 _Unity_ fired, shattering the fragile shell of the terraforming ship. **_Pointless dead end of evolution, destroyed before they even escaped their own solar system. Useless wastes of space and life. Better to leave the world vacant, maybe something better will evolve._**

There was no response to this as any of them might choose to act against the material of the cycle as they saw fit, though _Consensus_ and _Concord_ were both put out to have been interrupted in the midst of one of their endless, pointless discussions. Eternity left them with an abundance of time to talk and very little new to debate. Still, there was always the next system, always the next world, better not to have an argument at this point. Not with _Harbringer’s_ mood so chancy. Not with so little material available this cycle and so many of the brethren fallen to the weapons of the material.

* * *

## 253\. 27 NC Exbar, Exbar System

They just kept coming. Ushton had fallen ten hours ago. Not to the enemy, to exhaustion as the enemy relentlessly pursued them across the ground they’d lived and worked for all her life. At first they’d been able to outpace, or elude them with ease, but their numbers had only grown. Occasionally they managed an ambush, taking out one of their pursuers, but the weapons they’d taken from Travis’s thugs were not quiet things and the enemy, though clearly not used to forests, didn’t miss the volley of fire that was required to take down one of the heavily shielded creatures. Inga had had some luck with closer in weapons, as their shields didn’t stop a knife, or a heavy pipe like Ushton carried.

The problem was that the damn creatures were all different shapes, damnably tough and none of them were human, so figuring out where to strike was tricky. The ones which were vaguely humanoid weren’t too bad, there she had some idea where to strike, but the quadrupedal and octopedal ones were far more complicated. Even worse were the insectoid ones. She’d avoided them after Ushton’s attempt to strike the quadruped in the eye (on the theory that eyes were always vulnerable) had successfully taken out three of the creature’s six eyes, but the bursting goo had badly burned his hand and arm, rendering him vulnerable and unable to use the hand weapons.

Those thoughts which had been distracting her from the fact that she’d had to leave her father behind, but had inevitably led her back to that fact. He hadn’t been able to move any longer. She’d waited as long as she could, but when the enemy got close enough, she’d had to run if she wanted to survive. And she wanted to survive. Now she wished they’d had enough tech to get some sort of warning that this was coming, but Ushton had hated the tech, which was why he’d ended up on the penal colony of Exbar, too much preaching against the soulless high-tech wonders of the Federation could earn even an Alpha grade a ticket to a penal colony. He’d even hated the guns they were using as high-tech. That was why she’d taken his gun with her when she’d left. It was the only reason.

She slid down over the edge of a cliff, hanging from the protruding roots as she picked her way down to the cliff that hung halfway between ground and clifftop. It was the best chance to sleep without trying to go another twenty miles through the rapidly darkening woods. The enemy didn’t slow, or sleep, but they also didn’t know this area. She could outmaneuver them, outwait them. They’d leave eventually. No one could just leave this many troops in place permanently. No one would do that to catch her and whatever handful of other former prisoners who had escaped into the woods.

She would survive and she would find her cousin. Hands moved slowly as she reached the edge of the cave and began to swing forward towards it. Together they would teach these people not to cross the Blake’s, just as they’d taught Travi—

The thought slid away as the root she was holding snapped. Her hands closed spastically around it, but it provided no purchase and her feet had nothing to grip to. She fell.

An iron grip on her tongue and the certainty that a scream would bring her not help, but a painful death, kept her from screaming on the way down. She wasn’t too high up. Only a hundred feet, and it was over water, she might survive the fall, but she wouldn’t survive the predators a scream would bring now. This resolve lasted until she hit the water.

Ice raced up her legs, fighting with the firestorm of pain coming from both legs and what would have been a scream turned into a helpless gasp as the air was ripped from her lungs by the impact. The freezing water sapped her strength and every attempt to kick brought only agony, no progress towards either surface or shore. The breath which usually would have provided buoyancy had been lost. Arms flexing madly she struggled upwards, panic and adrenaline strengthening her arms enough to counteract the weight of wet clothes, useless legs, a combat knife and a pair of large guns.

She surfaced with a gasping desperate breath, which was enough to keep her near the surface with only a moderately heroic effort of her arms. The lake was not large, if she hadn’t been weighted down and her legs hadn’t been broken, then the swim would have been easy. As it was, it was going to be hellish. But she was a Blake. She would not let a little thing like almost certain death stop her. Ushton hadn’t. He’d faced it down with the dignity of a Blake, and the utterly exhausted.

The crossing was more a splashing, floating, pulling nightmare than a swim, but she reached the shore eventually. The wet leather of her belt was tight, making it awkward to pull the guns free, but she managed it with only a modicum of jarring agony sent through her legs. Inga managed to keep from screaming, only a few sobs had escaped her on the trip to shore, easily drowned out by her splashing, grasping progress.

Light eyes flickered around the dark woods desperately searching for any sign that her arrival had been noted. Shudders wracked her body as the cold clothing sapped what little heat she had and exhaustion tried to force her eyes to close, but a hunter’s instincts felt movement nearby and brought one of the guns to bear automatically (the other she’d laid beside her, waiting for her to run out of ammunition for the first, as trying to fire both at once was an exercise in futility as she would undoubtedly miss.

It was one of the smaller creatures, greyish, bipedal, one of the few without their absurdly powerful shields. She could take it down with one shot, had a dozen times since they landed, but they didn’t travel alone. There was nothing nearby that would hide her and the sandy beach was too soft to provide any grip for her to pull herself off the shore. Her eyes flicked back to the water, cold, inviting, a swift, relatively gentle death which did not include being dragged off as the other corpses had, well, probably.

Pride stiffened her spine and steadied her aim. She was a Blake. The shot took the monster in the head, splattering brains across the surroundings and it dropped. More were coming, an entire pack, moving fast. Her weapon was a powerful, slow firing one, but the creatures were stupid enough that they moved in a tight group, so one shot had a good chance of going through several of the creatures. Eight fell before she ran out of ammunition and grabbed the other gun. Two seized advantage of the lull in her fire and charged. The gun came up in time and exploded in her hands, the water had gotten into vital components, transforming it accidentally as a Federation trooper might have done if they desired to transform a rifle into a grenade.

The explosion killed her almost instantly, as well as crippling the two charging enemies. It took some time for another pack to arrive and drag them off to be recycled, as the bodies they found were too badly mangled to be used further as ground troops.

A victory. Of sorts.

* * *

## 253.29 NC Monolith

The Intelligence coordinated the efforts of its servants across the galaxy. This situation was unacceptable. The worlds united under one banner were proving absurdly self-destructive rather than accepting their destiny, their purpose. The soldiers fighting under the encircled arrow feared their masters more than they feared death.

Desertion was punishable by the enslavement of their entire family and so they did not desert. They were assigned to worlds far from those they’d been recruited/impressed upon and had little contact with the colonists which didn’t involve firearms and explosives. So they did not hesitate to obliterate entire worlds in nuclear fire rather than be seen to fail their leadership.

The Intelligence had expected that their resistance would lessen once they cut off communications, so that they could surrender, or just _not_ commit planetary suicide without being found out. That belief had been mistaken. Without communications, there was no way for them to receive countermanding orders and so they continued on, like automatons, regardless of what steps the ships tried to take.

Even more irritating was the sheer variety of self-destructive techniques they used. Space-stations were de-orbited, power-plants overloaded, bombs, misuse of terraforming equipment, crashed ships, overuse of mining equipment. It was…messy, which upset the Intelligence to no end.

Worse, it was unproductive. Billions of lives had been vaporized, beyond any recycling, beyond any use.

Worse still, they were doing harm which would reverberate throughout the cycles. The radiation on some worlds would eventually dissipate, but the mining equipment used on World 28834 had cracked it in half. Nothing would ever live there again. Few worlds were capable of evolving new sentient life. Every one lost meant that each subsequent cycle would have fewer resources, fewer species. Infuriating.

Worst of all, this cycle had not followed the path which had been laid out for it. They had not discovered element zero, or the use of the mass effect relays. The ships had suffered heavy casualties, far heavier than usual, due to the failure of the enemy to engage using standard weapons and tactics. Their emphasis on energy weaponry produced heavy casualties whenever the range closed enough to permit the weapons fire not to lose cohesion.

Moreover, their patterns of colonization didn’t follow the usual node and cluster pattern the mass relays suggested, but instead spread from a central point like coral. The search to ensure complete destruction of this species was going to have to be far more elaborate than usual, even with the thorough reports _Vanguard_ had provided before its destruction. And they had been able to function, at least for a while as a coherent galactic government, while shutting down the mass relays had little effect on their ability to gather their forces and strike as a single unit, instead of being picked off system by system and fleet by fleet.

With their worlds committing suicide, the Intelligence was unlikely to be able to create any repositories for this cycle and so their losses would not be made up. Disastrous.

Some casualties were expected in every harvest, usually amongst the lesser repositories, but also amongst the greater ones. The harvest only came when the civilizations had reached their apex, after all and so casualties were expected. Yet usually they suffered some few casualties and created a larger number of repositories then they’d lost. Yes, in some cycles that was not true, otherwise there would be so many repositories that they would darken the stars of every system in the galaxy, but this was absurd and unacceptable. They’d suffered worse losses only four times in the entire history of the cycles, and in all those cases it had been a result of a fast-breeding population of sentients producing so many ships and soldiers that casualties were heavy, but so too were the number of repositories which could be constructed from the recycled material. That was not the case here.

World 30900 had enough sentients to make up some of their losses, and so the Intelligence had ordered various ploys to attempt to take the world intact. With the failure of the last one, its ambush being ambushed in turn, it had chosen to attempt the same tactic, just with more reinforcements coming. The staged assault had only drawn in more and more Federation ships. The Intelligence had underestimated the number of ships the Federation had been able to repair* and of the ships sent, the precious repositories of prior civilizations, many, many had been lost.

 _*Though the Federation was not particularly efficient, fascist systems tend not to be, Earth reported having a far smaller population than it actually did for various political reasons and_ Vanguard _had never been able to get close enough to get an accurate read on its population._

The Intelligence did not make emotional decisions. The Intelligence did not have emotions. It believed this to the core of its artificial being. Therefore, it did not need to take time to reconsider, or let its temper cool. Instead it gave the orders immediately. Those were orders the others were eager to follow, without bothering with the usual pointless debates and griping.

This whole cycle was a bust. Unfortunate. Ah, well, there was always the next one.

* * *

## 253.29 NC Command Ship _FNS Unity_ , Earth

Servalan left fleet command to General Samor and Admiral Lana, who’d carved their way to command rank through a thousand skirmishes and fleet engagements, rather than the political maneuvering she’d used to reach supreme command rank. It had worked so far, but unfortunately, it left her struggling to deal with the far more complex problem of the politics of a world of billions whose political leader she’d personally had assassinated. Unfortunately, that meant that his underlings were not inclined to meet with her, for fear that she intended their assassination as well.

Given the manner of the President’s assassination, they were even unwilling to just communicate with her over the comm net, for fear she had agents in their own security. For most of them, she did not, as the most of the major players had either got themselves killed trying to play stupid power games with each other, or gotten themselves killed trying to play even stupider games with General Samor, who had no sense of humor and had spent years in the back of beyond because his undoubted military expertise made it worth keeping him alive despite his preference for solving political problems with firearms. Now that he was back and unleashed, sensible politicians (almost a contradiction in terms, Servalan admitted) were in hiding.

Most of the people who actually did things were still on the job, simply because they weren’t politically important and because involving them in the endless bloody disaster that was Federation politics would prevent anything from getting done, as they would have to be purged every few months, or years. So repairs and refueling were proceeding, despite the fact that the political situation was horribly unstable.

The problem with simply permitting that to occur was that the various political groups had their own power bases which were starting to turn on one another as they squabbled over the presidency. The muscle of the various groups was already creating problems. Servalan had searched for an elegant solution, but unfortunately, the collapse of the senior leadership made such a solution impossible. There were simply too many bit players, all scrabbling for scraps.

That only left one option. A press of a button and a dozen words sent all available ground troops (except for her personal guard) out onto Earth, to keep order. Given that they had met only the enemy’s monsters, not any of the creatures themselves, it was becoming increasingly clear that this was going to be a war of ships, not men. It would also lighten the load onboard those same ships and lengthen the time their fuel and supplies would last.

Usually this wouldn’t have been considered, due to the possibility of mutiny, but under these circumstances, mutiny was even more futile than usual.

The other problem which was rapidly becoming unavoidable was the problem of supplies. Earth was the center of the Federation, its single largest recruiting ground and massive industrial base. It could feed itself, barely, with the massive yeast vats and hydroponics’ bays. They’d be short on luxuries, which would rile up the Alpha Grade citizens, but that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that the system had been mined out of numerous crucial elements in the construction of ships and weapons systems as well as the raw materials to feed the refineries. Just keeping their ships in good repair and refueled required cargo runs from the colonies and that those colonies remain extant and functional.

Which simply wasn’t the case. Unloading the vast majority of her troops on Earth was the best move she could make, not that it was a good one. The unloading had just finished when news came in of the enemies change of posture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	12. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard celebrates. Maelon is kidnapped. Again. Jack escapes. Morinth makes a mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Mass Effect. We’re going a bit more off-canon now, as you may have noticed. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no canon (or at least none I’m aware of) for the events of this period. The other main reason for going off canon is because the actual cross-over part of this cross-over (which is, I swear, coming) will negate Mass Effect 2 from occurring (the events of Mass Effect 3…well, we’ll see). Since many of the characters I want involved in this story are Mass Effect 2 specific, I was faced with a bit of a conundrum.
> 
> So, why do it this way, asks the curious reader. Why not bring them in later on in the timeline? Maybe speed up the actual cross-over part of this alleged cross-over?
> 
> Because, dear reader, I want to limit the number of new people that Shepard has to meet once the cross-over occurs. There’s another reason I’m sure you’ll be able to spot by the end of this chapter, dear, patient reader.

## 2177 CE Kithriki Bar, Huuuge Station

The bar, like every gathering place on the station was packed to the gills with off-duty marines and sailors, Captain Mikhailovich’s rescued prisoners and residents of the station, no more than half of which were working.* An encouraging sight, Shepard thought from the door, before slipping into the throng, pausing long enough to congratulate them by name, thank them for their service and buy them a drink, but not long enough to put a damper on their celebrations.

_*Prostitution was a major industry on the station, and one of the few which did not rely upon piracy and the proceeds of piracy. As a result, Shepard had decided not to do anything at all about the prostitutes and to order Hassan to arrange matters so they didn’t need to worry about the legality of their business. That was easy enough, as it wasn’t within the System’s Alliance territory. The bigger problem was handling soldiers of Project Overwatch who chose to spend their cash on those prostitutes, as they were bound by the UCMJ, regardless of the location. Shepard had decided to simply not enforce those prohibitions, though future commanders might take a different position._

Captain Mikhailovich sat on the upper balcony, near enough to ensure a certain degree of propriety and everyone kept their clothes on, mostly, in public at least, without interfering too much with their partying. Shepard nodded to him and got a nod back before he turned his attention back to the Asari matriarch he was chatting with. Shepard chose to head for the other tiny pocket of calm in the writhing, shouting, dancing mass of people celebrating victory and survival, the one not currently talking to anyone.

The captain deserved to be part of the party, he and his had done a fantastic job, far exceeding her expectations. The rescue of the kidnapping victims before the Batarians could enslave them, that she’d expected. Planting the device to destroy the station on Loki when the Batarian shuttle arrived, and, not at all coincidentally, the Batarian shuttle, was what she’d hoped he’d do. After all, she’d ordered him to, but it was nice to know that he would obey her orders to take actions which might be construed as an act of war against the Hegemony.

What had surprised her was planting the two stage device. The first shaped charge had blown up, taking out the base and the shuttle, without disturbing the second, more massive explosive planted underneath it. The Batarian cruiser, in a fit of madness* had chosen to close in on the destroyed base and crashed shuttle, trying to close to a range where his ship’s sensor’s would work even through the nightmare that was Loki’s atmosphere and radiation. He must have had an extremely skilled pilot to get a cruiser as close to the surface of Loki as he did without crashing.

_*Unbeknownst to Commander Shepard, the Batarian captain’s son had led the expedition down to collect the soon-to-be slaves._

That pilot was not good enough to handle a nuclear explosion going off a hundred feet under his ship, cracking it open along the cruiser’s main gun, the spinal mounted mass accelerator that ran the length of the ship. The landing team had salvaged some few things and confirmed there were no survivors. It was a damn shame about the two dozen slaves, both Batarian and non-Batarian who’d been on the ship, but Shepard shed no tears for the rest of the crew.

She’d been concerned that Hassan would hit the roof when he heard about their addition of explosives to what he’d known the original plan to be. But when it came out that the Hegemony ship hadn’t been transmitting a Hegemony IFF, or any IFF at all, he was inclined to take the view that this had been an anti-pirate operation, followed by perfectly legitimate salvage. They had no actual knowledge that the ship was a Hegemony ship when they took their actions and it wasn’t like the Hegemony was going to come out and state that they’d been trading with pirates so much that the Alliance should have known it was one of their ships.

As she walked over to Hassan, sitting alone at the bar, nursing a single drink, she considered how much work he’d put into the report explaining that (and why the Project shouldn’t be cancelled) to the Admiralty and the Ministry, and the Legislature and felt a little bad about not giving him a heads up. On the other hand, there were several hundred people who hadn’t been turned into slaves here, celebrating that fact, so she didn’t feel too bad about it.

“Shouldn’t you be off celebrating?” she asked, taking the seat beside him.

He grinned at her, “Shouldn’t you?”

“I think they’ll have more fun without their commanding officer looking over their shoulder,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the throng. Enough of the locals had come around to viewing the Human conquest as a positive thing (or at least something not to be resisted, not with the opportunity to take their credits), that there were plenty of locals interspersed in amongst the soldiers and rescued prisoners.

“And they’ll have more fun with their lawyer looking over their shoulders?” he asked.

“No offense, but most of them don’t know you’re a lawyer.”

He snorted. “Fair point. Guess I’m just not much of a party animal.”

“No, a non-party-animal lawyer?” the sarcasm was thick on the ground.

“Hey, there were some wild parties in law school! I just didn’t go to them, because I was studying. Or sleeping. Or something.”

Shepard laughed, glanced around the room, noting a cluster of Asari looking at them. “Well, you’re not studying, or sleeping, or anything right now and it looks like you have some admirers.”

He flushed slightly and shrugged. The Asari giggled. “Ok, so, there’s a story about that, if you want to hear it, but it’s a stupid, stupid story.”

“Oh?” she encouraged.

“So, you may know that I did a good-will tour amongst the Asari, as Humanity’s it-boy, what with being so brilliant and,” he posed slightly, “gorgeous.”

“Right,” she said, flatly.

Hassan grinned. “So, my handlers thought that I shouldn’t reveal that I was gay, because it might hurt my popularity.”

“Ah.”

“But, since I wasn’t hired here for my beauty,” he paused and looked at her, teasingly.

“Indeed not!”

He managed a single eyebrow raise, which Shepard found impressive and she blushed slightly, realizing the implication of her indignant response. A moment’s thought made it clear that there was nothing to say in response to that which wasn’t either insulting or inappropriate, so she remained silent.

Hassan nodded, a little grumpy that she’d spotted the trap. “So, I decided I could tell Porra over there,” he jerked his head towards the cluster of giggling Asari,” when she made a pass at me. Based on her reaction,” the Asari glanced over at them again and blushed a darker blue, their giggles reaching truly epic levels, “I think my handlers may have been mistaken that such a revelation would _reduce_ my popularity.”

“Yeah. Straight men, maybe?”

“Yeah.”

She laughed. “Well, you could always go over and join the justicar’s worshipers,” she waved over at where Samara was seated quietly watching the party. Dozens of younger Asari had gathered around her, along with various others drawn to the grouping, or to Samara. The justicar wasn’t encouraging them, but nor was she discouraging them.

“I’m avoiding her until we have some answers to her questions. How’s that going, by the way?”

Shepard shrugged slightly, as if she wasn’t entirely aware. In point of fact, it was going extremely well, due mostly to the efforts of Yal’terra, the Quarian engineer Mikhailovich’s people had rescued. He’d been spared the worst of the abuses of his fellows, as assault was ineffective through a suit and rape was almost certainly a death sentence, but he still wasn’t in the best of shape. Shepard had felt bad about letting him work on the problem, but he’d volunteered. A remarkably skilled engineer, he was slicing through Parte Divi’s security systems as fast as he could connect up the supercomputers and run the cracking programs.

The Quarian was on his pilgrimage, searching for something to aid the Migrant Fleet’s survival. That was all fine, even if Hassan hadn’t been entirely convinced that her authority to recruit included authority to recruit people from outside the Alliance. However, a few arguments later, he’d concluded that she was allowed to hire contractors, such as Yal’terra, though the pay had to come out of their personnel budget, which required her to sit through a lengthy discussion with him regarding transferring funds into their personnel budget. That was probably his revenge for making the decision without talking to him, thus forcing him to justify a post-hoc decision.

What she hadn’t mentioned to Hassan was that everyone knew that Quarian pilgrims reported back to Migrant Fleet, as best they could. That had been a strikingly awkward conversation, but she’d finally managed to convince him that she didn’t much care about him talking to the Migrant Fleet, so long as his communications weren’t intercepted. What they were doing wasn’t particularly secret and if there was one point where the Migrant Fleet and the Alliance were in complete agreement, it was what to do with pirates. “I do not care what you tell those who should be our allies in this venture, but I care a great deal about being lied to by people working for me,” had produced an honest response.

And her own engineers had set up a secure communications system, which her people would be watching for anything which they might actually wish to keep secret from the Migrant Fleet. Yal’terra was probably aware that they could review the transmissions, but wasn’t aware that they would be monitoring it at all times. He was a skilled engineer, but not in any way a tactical, or political thinker, which was what had gotten him sold.

Apparently there was a leak between Ilium’s indenturing system and the far less regulated Hegemony slavery system. Steps would need to be taken about that, but Shepard was still trying to figure out whether the leak needed to be plugged, or the whole indenturing system on Ilium needed dealing with. Instinct said something needed to be done about Ilium generally, but Ilium was no backwater which could be overawed with a couple of platoons of troops. Its own police numbered in the tens of thousands, its corporate oligarchs had substantial numbers of armed ships to ensure their trade with the Terminus systems was not interfered with and they had powerful connections to the Asari Republics. Taking on Ilium directly was simply unfeasible. At least at this juncture.

She might try to use the existence of the leak to argue against the practice of indentured servitude, however that would require a great deal of time, which could be better spent elsewhere and would put her at odds with the powers at Ilium. Better to just get them to plug their own leaks. It left a bitter taste in her mouth, however. That was what Hassan had argued for, as had Mikhailovich, but, looking back at Samara, she couldn’t help wondering what the justicar would suggest and how she would react to the knowledge of what she was probably going to do.

“Keep me in the loop on that. We’ll want to handle her pretty carefully. I made some inquiries, she’s been a justicar for centuries and is an Asari matriarch. Major league scary if we mishandle this.”

“Really? Major league scary?” Shepard teased.

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you prefer something more like biotically and physically extremely skilled, an expert in single person tactics, essentially a walking weapon of mass destruction?” he asked, pulling out his lawyer voice. Shepard grinned at him and opened her mouth to respond. “Not that that makes her unique in this crowd.”

Shepard laughed. “Well, I’ll leave you to lurk in the corner. I’ve got some work to do myself,” she paused for a moment, then grabbed a drink, “but I have time for one drink.”

She glanced up at Mikhailovich, saluted him with her glass, but chose to leave the man alone. The run back from Loki had been rough, with all three ships packed to the gills with scared, traumatized, and frankly, stinky passengers. The ships had been red-lining their life support systems to ensure that they got all of the prisoners out and everyone had been packed in like sardines, even the senior officer had been forced to share his quarters. Idly, she wondered if that, and the stories told under such circumstances, might have affected the captain’s decision to be even more extravagant in his treatment of the Batarians than she’d ordered.

And she recalled that the matriarch he was currently speaking so intensely to that he’d missed her salute was one of the former prisoners, a leader amongst them. She trusted the captain wasn’t up to anything inappropriate. Especially when the owner of Kithriki Bar joined him. One of the few Batarians on the station who’d remained after she’d mentioned that she was a survivor of the raid on Mindoir. She was also one of the few Batarians who didn’t make Shepard’s skin crawl, probably because she was exactly that, _she_. Batarian women just weren’t seen outside Batarian homes, or at most, off Batarian worlds, all except the lowest castes being closely confined.

Of course, Shepard knew from first-hand reports of freed slaves, that confinement did not generally render them hospitable to the slaves brought into their household. Quite the reverse in fact, as many of the most brutal tortures were inflicted by Batarian House-Mothers on their slaves. But to see one out in the universe, working for a living and now, apparently, socializing with other species, if the laughter of the group was anything to go by, suggested Kithriki was no ordinary Batarian, to the extent such a thing exists. Shepard had people looking into her background, but for the moment she was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, though not to turn her back on the Batarian, or any Batarian, ever.

Shepard very carefully was not the first person to leave the party, but she was among the first, and grateful for the opportunity to get back to work. The mission had been a complete success, with only half a dozen casualties and no fatalities. The vast majority of the residents of the station had surrendered upon hearing the Stationmaster had died. In that sense, the shift in tactics had actually been useful, as she’d originally placed a higher priority on gaining control of systems than eliminating the leader. In retrospect that was a mistake created by her training focusing on opposing sensible militaries, where the removal of the person at the top might create a bit of confusion, but certainly wouldn’t result in surrender of the forces.

A quick visit to the recovering soldiers and granting them what pleasant rewards the doc said they could take and then she was back in her office, preparing a message to the Ilium authorities telling them about their problem and that they should clean it up, or she would, using explosives.

That put her in a terrible mood, which probably affected her decision to respond to the news that they’d found the quarry Samara sought by taking the justicar there personally on the _Mindoir_.

* * *

## 2177 CE _HRS_ _Listara,_ Paz System

The corporate research occuring on the nearby planet of Garvug provided a useful cover to bring in all the materials they needed and a source of Krogan prisoners to be experimented on. Maelon didn’t need many and hadn’t asked for any more than had already been provided to him, but the location made sense. He walked down to meet the arriving shipment. The _HRS* Listara_ was receiving supplies irregularly, in order to aid in their concealment.

_*Heplorn Research Ship. Most Salarian vessels, if not in the service of the Union itself (in which case they are referred to as the Salarian Union Ship, or SUS), adopt prefixes based on the Dalatrass who owns them._

In theory they were simply a ship doing research into the damage done to Garvug during the Krogan occupation of the planet, seeking to compete with the corporate interests already on the planet. The corporate interests on planet were attempting to terraform the world to undo the damage the Krogan had caused, requiring extensive genetic engineering, though on bacteria and plants, not higher life forms. That was the niche the _Listara_ was theoretically trying to fill.

As cover stories went, it wasn’t particularly good. Fortunately, no one believed it, imagining instead that it was an STG or Dalatrass led espionage operation, aimed at the corporate interests on the planet. Supplies came in irregularly in order to prevent those same corporate interests from either sabotaging, or spying on the _Listara_ in turn. It was irritating, but it did mean that he had an excuse to go down to the airlock and check that all his stuff had come and been unloaded, given the time before the next shipment came in.

The cover story for the cover story even had the benefit of being true. The crew the Heplorn Dalatrass had sent was indeed spying on the corporate research taking place on the planet, relatively incompetently, to be honest, as secrecy wasn’t part of the goal, the Dalatrass hadn’t sent her best operatives, but rather her best soldiers, in order to keep the situation under control.

It wasn’t a bad idea, but it did explain why Maelon had been able to set up the systems necessary to destroy his research and/or every Salarian on the ship, without getting caught. Maelon was not STG, but he’d learned enough to outmaneuver those who thought skillful deployment of violence excused them from subtlety. He considered it, sometimes, when one of the lab techs thought they could leapfrog over his slow, steady research with a spot of vivisection. Lacking the authority to stop them, he’d simply ensured their efforts had failed and got the man reassigned to janitorial. As far as anyone else knew, it was payback for trying to make Maelon look like a fool, not punishment for torture and murder.

But, the scientist had to admit, he was running up against his own problems, as the Dalatrass was demanding results. It was too early for live Krogan trials, the cost in lives would be horrific at this stage, but the Dalatrass didn’t care. She had a plentiful supply of Krogan on Garvug and a ship full of heavily armed soldiers to go kidnap them. So far, he’d been able to stop that by convincing her he was a perfectionist, of course he didn’t care about their lives, but if she wanted someone who’d blunder his way to a possible answer atop a pile of corpses, that wasn’t him. He was a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. That argument appealed to her own sense of pride and characterization (mistakenly in his view) of herself. So it was working.

Maelon worked himself around the clock, trying to solve the problem before it stopped working. Or, worse, the Dalatrass died, in which case this whole project stood a good chance of being flushed out the airlock, along with all the personnel who worked for it, avoiding any chance of the Heplorn following the Lystheni into exile.

That was, in fact, what he assumed it was which led to the ship unloading not heavy cargo containers, but rather a wave of grenades and slugs, sending the guards and crew scurrying in all directions, or thrashing around on the ground in pools of green blood.

Some part of his mind wondered why the new Heplorn Dalatrass wouldn’t simply destroy the ship, but that part of his foolish mind, the part which was obsessing over the issue of who and why, while the rest of his brain and body sensibly sent an **overload** into the hatch and fell back towards the lab, where he would free the Krogan prisoners and head for the shuttle.

Of course, that would be a tricky proposition as he hadn’t told any of them of his true intentions, so getting them off the ship without having them rip him into Salarian bits was going to be a neat trick. His mind screeched to a stop when one of the escape pod hatches blew in right in front of him and a smoke grenade popped through the hole. Maelon scampered into hiding behind a stanchion, the M-77 Paladin falling into his hand, a gift from his once-revered, now hated mentor, Mordin Solus, the pistol was easy to conceal and had enough stopping power to slow even a Krogan.

The schematics for the ship unfolded behind his eyes and he realized he’d stepped the wrong way to make it to the lab. Now he either had to go back through the main cargo bay, which from the sounds coming from behind him was an open war zone, or through the smoke in front of him. If he’d rushed forward, the instant the grenades came down, he might well have made it through without a fight, but he couldn’t have been certain they were smoke grenades, not explosives, so he didn’t feel too bad about the error—

The figures coming slowly through the smoke stopped that thought. They were not Salarians. It was possible for the Heplorn Dalatrass to have hired mercenaries, or pirates, but it seemed unlikely, too much risk of information leakage, unless this was a double-cross of the pirates too. And then, of course there was always the possibility that this was, in fact, exactly what it appeared, a pirate attack. The Terminus systems were always vulnerable to such. But his time with Mordin and the STG had left him paranoid about seeming coincidences.

For several long moments, he was trapped in the world of what might be and lost track of what was. Then his mind snapped back to the present. The figures he saw were too large for Salarians, too small for Krogan, too masculine for Asari, had the wrong legs for Quarians or Turians and were wearing helmets, which probably meant they weren’t Batarian, given their absurd predilection for leaving off their helmets, even when going into battle (something about the how impressive it was that they had four-eyes). It was just barely possible it was a group of Drell, but it was far more likely to be Humans, or mostly Humans, given the small number of Drell in the galaxy and the fact that they mostly stuck by their Hanar saviors. All that flashed through his mind in a moment, accompanied by information regarding Human vulnerabilities, genetic, biological and psychological, though he was far from and expert in the latter two and the former was not of a great deal of assistance in these circumstances.

He could kill his subjects now, it might be more merciful, but if he could get to them, arm them, he might be able to get them all out, get them all to safety, do something good. Steeling himself, he waited until a figure slid through the smoke, then hit it with an **overload** , the electrical attack froze the larger man for a moment and Maelon rushed forward into the slowly dissipating smoke. He grabbed a second grenade, the same as the ones he’d seen earlier and dropped it to add to the confusion and fired once, into the Human’s leg, drawing a scream from the paralyzed figure. The wound wasn’t fatal, well, not if his recollection of Human physiology was accurate, but taking care of the man would slow their advance, far more than a copse would. As he raced towards the holding cells, he wished that he’d acquired a **tactical cloak** as Mordin had suggested.

Immoral and amoral the old man may have been, but he was a survivor and Maelon desperately wished he’d paid more attention to those lessons. The holding cells were built into the lab, so he could rescue his subject and his research at the same time. And the labs were designed both to keep the subjects in and any invaders out. It was the most secure part of the ship, which was why he was very surprised to hear non-Salarian voices coming from ahead of him as he approached. Terror drove him into a nearby storage closet and he automatically ran a comm check, to see where the voices were coming from.

There was another team ahead of him, their comms were secured, but not well enough to keep him out, not once he put the supercomputers in his lab on the job. He listened in, trying to figure out what was going on. Some parts of the tactical picture were obvious from circumstances, or from the passing attention he gave his own comm system. The enemy had attached shuttles to the life-pod hatches and were cutting their way in all over the ship, though they weren’t having it all their own way as the GARDIAN defenses were still active on the rearward and lower parts of the ship, meaning any shuttle which attempted to approach from that direction was shredded. With the ships attached at the airlock, they weren’t going to fire on one another, and neither could get away without the permission of the other. Apparently their attackers had radically underestimated their ability to survive a straight-up fight and had lost the battle for the cargo bay, with the guards there pushing into the enemy ship, but there were teams of boarders all over the place. Despite his earlier criticism, placing elite soldiers on the ship had obviously paid off and he was prepared to admit, he was _very_ grateful for their presence now. He would have been more grateful if they had been more immediately present, but at this point he would take what he could get.

Especially as the squad ahead of him was talking about the fact that this enemy was looking for him. They were, in fact, waiting to ambush him and capture him alive, should he show up. This was not entirely a surprise, the ship didn’t have anything except him, his research and his assistants that was worth stealing, but it did at least rule out the possibility of this being a mere opportunistic raid. It also probably ruled out the Dalatrass cleaning house, as he’d be high on the list of people who most definitely were _not_ wanted alive by her in those circumstances, though, thinking about some of the STG boys he’d known, he admitted the possibility that everything he heard over the com was intended to mislead observers, or create a record that would be used for some other purpose, like covering up his ‘accidental’ death.

Their communication suggested that the squad was mostly waiting in the cross corridors. Except for two inside the lab itself. The fact that they’d overcome the security on the lab was worrisome indeed, though it may well have been the idiots in the lab who let them in. He certainly wasn’t picking up any communications from them, though that might just indicate they were being held hostage.

Maelon was no engineer, but he could use a computer system and his computers had enough processing power to bull their way through any firewalls and lock out any attempt at overrides, so a quick set of command locked the cross corridor hatches down and unlocked the main door at the same time. Maelon raced forward, weapon in one hand, omni-tool on the other ready to send an **overload** into the waiting troops.

The **overload** missed, which was embarrassing, but a round from the Paladin sent the troops scurrying into cover and their need to capture him alive was as good as a powerful shield. Maelon moved around the room, using the lab equipment as cover, always heading towards the pen release controls. A dozen Krogan, even if some of them were heavily sedated, would resolve this problem quickly. Then it was just a matter of making sure that resolution didn’t kill him, but the truth would probably solve that problem for him. If not, then a blow from a Krogan fist would solve all his problems.

The explosions from outside the door were loud and briefly encouraging as he imagined support was coming. However, a moment’s thought made it clear that it was far more likely to be the enemy troops he’d trapped in the cross corridors blowing their way through. That moment’s thought was stretched over about a minute and a half as he skittered around, avoiding their attempts to either pin him, or disarm him.

Maelon finally reached the control console, which had been isolated from the ship’s systems for security reasons which had seemed perfectly valid at the time and undoubtedly would seem so again at the point when he wasn’t attempting to retake control of his own lab. He went down under a pile of armored bodies before he could do more than activate the controls.

Suffocating under a mass of armored Humans was not how he’d expected to die, but it was a very real possibility, until he dimly heard a man’s voice shouting for them to get off him. Or at least, he assumed he was the ‘frog’ to which the voice, whose hostility was clear even through half a dozen layers of armor and flesh, was referring.

The Human pile slowly dispersed, hands remaining clamped on each of his extremities. The pistol had escaped his grip when he’d been tackled, which was probably a good thing, as in the tight quarters, someone undoubtedly would have been shot and he had no desire for that someone to have been him. His omni-tool was ripped off and the man who removed it shrieked as the tool shorted out and exploded, sending a burst of electricity into the man’s shields and a consuming burst of plasma through his clutching hands to burn fruitlessly against the deck until there was nothing left of the device. The man’s left hand ended at the palm and his right ended in a cauterized sump where his palm had been.

His screams were echoing around the room until a medic raced forward and applied medigel, which mostly quieted the crippled Human, at least in the sense that he stopped screaming. An impressive stream of profanity came out of his helmet. The medic slapped the back of his helmet and told him to shut up, on the theory that they’d get him patched up with prosthetics and clone-grown parts. He’d be good as new in a couple of months if he just shut the hell up. And he’d take a bludgeoning if he didn’t. The man shut up and an officer retook control of the situation, snapping orders.

Bruised and dripping green blood from small cuts everywhere the unarmored skin of his body had impacted a rough edge of armor plate (which felt like damn near everywhere), Maelon was dragged to his feet and efficiently, though not without puns (which he didn’t understand) and laughter (which he did) frog-marched him out of the lab and away from both the cargo bay and the bridge, certain centers of opposition. The laughter was insulting, but useful, if one of the STG team had been injured in that fashion, none of them would have found anything amusing for a good long time, probably not until the people responsible were dead. Whoever these people were, they weren’t a team, for all that they worked together.

A shuttle was still attached to the life-pod launcher they forced him into, though forcing their way aboard had destroyed the life-pod itself. The seal wasn’t very good. Emergency foam had been sprayed around, but air was leaking through the imperfect seal between the life-pod and the shuttle. For a moment he contemplated trying to break the foam seal in this brief moment when he was mostly unrestrained in order to slip through the narrow confines of the temporary airlock. He didn’t. Partly because he still had moral objections to suicide (which amused him infinitely considering his lack of moral standards elsewhere), partly because everyone but him was wearing a helmet, so he couldn’t take any of the assholes with him, partly because he happened to know that he couldn’t break the seal with a kick, partly because he knew even if he somehow did, they’d pull him out before he could suffocate, but mostly because of his own damnable (literally, if he had followed the theistic faith of almost half his clutch-mates) curiosity.

He wanted to know who had found him and what they wanted. If it turned out to be too painful even for his self-punishing state of mind, or if they wanted something he would not give, the STG had provided methods, both artificial and completely natural, to end his life painlessly. But he would not give them that, not while it would be a victory for them. Only if his death would be a victory for him would he give it.

The shuttle broke away, somewhat overloaded with personnel. It was standing room only, except for him, as he was webbed into a crash seat to ensure him the greatest possibility of survival.

There was nothing to listen to, or see on the ride, as the shuttle lacked windows, so Maelon spent the time trying to discipline his scattered thoughts, to meet this new challenge at his best, for all that it might exceed his ability to handle even then. Walking through the corridors with his arms widely spread, each held by a large Human was awkward, but the ship wasn’t that large, so the walk was relatively quick. Somewhat to his surprise, he was taken to the bridge, not the brig.

A female Human turned to face him. Dressed in a white and black outfit that was form-fitting and too thin to be serious armor. Unlike the Humans who surrounded him, she wasn’t wearing a helmet. Impractically long black hair hung down. He evaluated her as Mordin had taught him. The muscle development and the pattern of callouses made it clear she was a biotic, with at least some other martial arts training. Even through their armor, he could tell that the Humans were looking at the woman’s chest, or hips, the way some of his clutch-mates had looked at Asari. She must be attractive, by the standards of Humans. He’d never seen the attraction and he didn’t now. Besides, there was something off about her.

Maelon was far from an expert in Human genetics, but you couldn’t come up in the university system when he had without learning something about the topic, as Humans were the hot new thing on the scene when he’d been in school. Every other student had been picking at some piece of the Human genome, or the modifications they’d made, or for the less competent, medi-gel or some other Human invention. Many of the studies had been focused on inherited traits, which she was not displaying the right patterns of. Inconsistent, incoherent patterns, in fact. His eyes narrowed. _Chimera_. That’s what she was, a degree of genetic modification wildly illegal in Citadel space. Interesting indeed.

Then his eyes widened as he realized that she was studying him to almost exactly the same degree that he’d been studying her. They stared at each other for a surprisingly long time, testing the patience of the men who surrounded him, who began to shift their wait, tap a foot, shrug their shoulders, but neither Maelon, nor the woman twitched. Finally she spoke, as she had to, as she had other responsibilities and he did not, not any longer.

“Maelon Heplorn. Cerberus requires your services.”

Maelon opened his mouth to respond, but at a signal he couldn’t make out, it could have been a muscle twitch, a sub-vocalization, or triggered by word choice, but regardless, images were projected into the air around her. Images of his clutch-mates. His favorite clutch-mates, going about their daily business. The images weren’t real time, but from what he could make out, they was very recent. 

“Do I need to make threats, or do you understand your situation?”

“I am in the custody of an organization named Cerberus, which I’ve never heard of, and I’m being threatened with harm to my family in an attempt to induce my cooperation and prevent me from committing suicide, even though we both know that should I do so, you will not in fact follow through with your implied threat, because the risk of exposure and drawing STG attention would far outweigh the benefit to you reputation for mercilessness,” Maelon countered.

“If you’ve never heard of us, then how would you know what we will, or will not do?” She asked.

Maelon shrugged and his guards yanked his arms back, drawing a tiny yelp of pain from him and an annoyed look from his interrogator. “You’re obviously organized and at least minimally competent.”

“The fact that you haven’t heard of us would seem to indicate more than minimally competent, STG Member.”

He actually laughed, “By the Wheel, you Humans are so fucking provincial. There are a dozen times as many Volus as there are Humans in the galaxy. Do you know anything about the dozen different Volus movements looking for either independence from the Heirarchy, or complete assimilation into it?” the woman didn’t react, “All my lack of knowledge indicates is that you’re very new, very small, and very irrelevant to my areas of expertise. No one knows about everything and my interests are very far from Humanity, _Chimera_.”

That shook her, though she hid it very well. One of the guards shook him, “What did you call her, frog?”

The woman waved a hand, “Out, all of you, leave the prisoner to me.”

The guards left, the one who’d spoken dragged by one of the ones with more ornate armor, presumably a more senior member of the group, who knew his interrogator well enough to recognize her annoyance at the guard’s stupid attempt at chivalry.

“You’re right, of course, we wouldn’t bother killing them. The whole Salarian Union is tied together by STG unit ties that cross bloodlines. If we started wholesale slaughter of your clutch-mates we’d draw down a dozen units on us and I doubt even we would survive that. Not,” she waved a hand and the photos vanished, “that I could admit that in front of the rank and file.”

“Of course not,” Maelon straightened slightly.

“Which is why I would instead destroy the ship you were just on, with all its prisoners left on board. After all, without you, they’re useless.”

“What would I care?” Maelon asked, trying to project honest confusion.

“Oh, is it only Krogan females you object to killing?”

Maelon didn’t flinch, didn’t show any sign at all that he was shocked. His complaint regarding the death of the Krogan females in his last mission to Tuchanka had never made it into the official STG mission report. The only way she would know about that was if someone on the mission had told her, or she had access to the raw records. Either was terrifying. He’d never heard of this Cerberus group, that was true, but if they had that sort of access to the STG, then it wasn’t because they were penny ante.

Despite his best efforts he saw triumph in her eyes as she read something in his reaction. Or, he cautioned himself silently, so he believed.* He shrugged. “So what is it you want me to do?”

_*Cross-species body language is always tricky to read, even for experts. Within his own area of expertise, Maelon was very aware of this, as he’d studied the early records of the Salarian-Krogan interaction. Even when they were allied, there had been trouble as Salarian attempts at courtesy were read as condescension and Krogan overtures of friendship, or gestures of respect, were read as direct threats. Perhaps the most famous of these miscommunications was misreading a Salarian’s trembling as fear, rather than adrenaline hitting a system already running on the edge of metabolic overload. If a Salarian was trembling, it meant that his body believed that the edge the adrenaline would give him was necessary. It meant that the Salarian was in do-or-die land._

“Is that agreement I hear?” she countered, sweetly.

“Would you believe it if it was?”

“Not before you know what we’re asking of you. It’s nothing terribly complicated, or even necessarily counter to your interest. We want something not dissimilar to what you were working on here. Not the immortality. The Illusive Man is too smart for that. He sees immortality for the trap it is. However, the other Krogan advantages…those we want for our soldiers.”

“As you want the Asari and Salarian advantages? Though the Turian ones must provide a bit of technical problem with their genetic structure? I’m sure you have other teams working on that.”

“That’s hardly your concern.”

“No. It’s not.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

He broke the silence first this time. “I assume your elusive man in farsighted enough not to want his troops sterilized any more than my dear grandmother wants that for her daughters?”

The woman went even more flat and unresponsive than usual. Maelon couldn’t determine what that meant. Irritation flared to life as she forced the emotion to cover up whatever he’d accidentally triggered. “It’s Illusive, not elusive.”

“Whatever distinction you’re trying to make is not translating,” he went flat himself, rather than respond to her irritation with his own.

The woman paused for a moment, then shrugged, “It hardly matters. You will not be speaking with him.”

“Good to know. Now are you going to answer my question? Do you simply want additional traits, or do you want additional traits plus sterility?”

Again she went flat, but this time she answered. “Just the additional traits.”

“Then I’ll need my test subjects and my research, before you blow the ship.”

“We can take care of that. Do we need anything additional to get your files?”

Maelon’s hands flexed in moderate irritation. “Well, you need my omni-tool.”

Her eyes flicked to his bare hands, though she’d noted the absence of his omni-tool when he entered. “And you programmed it to melt down the moment it was removed from you? Without any way to regain your data?”

She was incredulous. Despite everything, he laughed. Hey light eyes clouded and he managed to speak. “Sorry, you looked just like Mordin, then, when I’d done something particularly stupid.”

“Well, you did—“ actual, unforced irritation filled her words.

Maelon interrupted her, humor draining out of him. “No, I didn’t,” his voice low and venomous, as he spoke to his mentor through his captor, “you and Mordin both have causes for which no crime is too vile and which must be served, even after your death. I don’t. You kill me, you get nothing and neither does my dear Dalatrass, which is why I’m willing to take the deal you offer.”

“If it’s still on the table, you’re much less valuable if you have to redo a year of research.”

Maelon shrugged, “Your call, there’s nothing I can do about it, well, unless you happen to have a blank Lithobar omni-tool?”

“Why would you need that?”

“It was the model I used. Of course, I remember all my binding codes, with a blank one, I might be able to recreate it.”

“Those codes are approximately ten thousand randomly generated characters,” she pointed out.

“And?”

She nodded as if he’d made a fair point. “You can recall that, but not your research?”

“Of course I recall the research, but the data collected was vast and what I looked at was the results of the analyses I had the computers run. I remember those, but I have a dozen other analyses still to run. It’s gathering the data which will take the time.”

Her lips curled slightly, but she believed him, because he was telling the absolute truth. “I happen to have such an omni-tool.”

“Really? Few humans buy from Lithodime Industries, their products are optimized for Salarian physiology,” he smirked, “few humans could handle that.”

She just smirked back at him.

“Interesting, I do wonder how extensive your genetic modifications are. You could be a useful test subject yourself for the back-end of the project, introducing the genetic modifications into a human population.”

Her eyes were ice and wisps of biotic power flared between fingers which very deliberately resisted the urge to clench into fists. “That’s not your problem, isolating the Krogan traits from the influence of the genophage is your responsibility.”

Maelon shrugged, noting her apparent loss of control at the notion of being made a test subject and leapt to the wrong conclusion, namely that the woman had been a test subject somewhere before being retrieved by Cerberus, or was a test subject of the organization itself and unhappy at the reminder. That information was useful, but false, which was, of course, the whole point. “Fair enough. I’ll need a tech and some time, then access to the data-port.”

“Not a problem,” she spoke into a comm unit and the doors opened, bringing in a pair of guards and an unarmored woman who must have been the technician.

“Take him to engineering. I’ll send the omni-tool down to you,” she spoke to the tech, ignoring Maelon, as if his words had offended her.

“Excellent. Oh, since I will be talking with you, what should I call you? The evasive woman?”

“Miranda will do,” she extended a hand, a deliberate olive branch.

Maelon took it without a second’s hesitation, but neither of them believed they had a real deal. Figuring out how to get out of their hands was going to be a great deal more difficult than with the Dalatrass’s troops. Still, as Mordin always said, ‘Challenge fosters growth.’ The only question was what direction would this challenge force him to grow in?

* * *

## 2177 CE _SSV Mindoir,_ Dakka System

“Anything interesting in this system?” Shepard asked. The trip had been horribly dull. The sight of the _Mindoir_ , broadcasting her full ident freely, had turned one hijacking into a headlong flight that had outpaced the Project Overwatch ship when they’d made use of a main relay and dropped into the last system, then an FTL cruise to the Dakka system, then discharge the drive core, then they could make it to Chalkhos and Samara’s target. Coming along had seemed like a good idea at the time. After three boring days, she was wishing she’d sent Samara off with Captain Mikhailovich and Hassan rather than coming herself.

“I’ve got a standard repeating Come Save Me* from a shuttle. Looks like a freighter is responding. Or, has responded, about fifteen minutes ago, correcting for light delay,” the scanner tech said.

_*Come Save Me, is how spacers refer to the standard Computerized Safety Message beacon installed on all ships constructed within the Alliance. It activates automatically under preprogrammed circumstance,, which novice spacers might easily trigger, meaning that any experienced spacer has seen dozens of such warnings, most of which were the result of people skipping a step in their flight checklists._

“Is it near our discharge point?” Shepard asked.

“No more than a light second out from the discharge point.”

“Pull the freighter’s registration.”

“It’s the _IMS* Trafficker_ ** no known criminal violations listed in Citadel space, but it hasn’t been anywhere near Citadel space in the last two decades.”

_*IMS stands for Ilium Merchant Ship. This is the standard registration for ships which expect to trade in both the Terminus and Citadel Space, both because it’s extremely cheap registration, with minimal regulation and because Ilium’s own position as interface between the Asari Republics and the Terminus provides some degree of legitimacy._

_**This name was an accurate translation, but it didn’t have all the right implications, as the Batarian name which was being translated didn’t have quite the same negative implications, of smuggling and illegality._

Shepard nodded. “We’re broadcasting as the _MSV* Mallum_ , right?” Hassan had almost had a fit about that, but when she agreed to ensure that the registration was shifted back to the _SSV Mindoir_ before launching any attacks, he acquiesced, especially after seeing the difficulties flying under their own identity caused.

_*Merchant Space Vessel._

“Yes, commander. Are we planning to intercept the ship?”

“I think so. Lieutenant,” she turned to the pilot, “plot a course which gets us to the discharge point, but also gets us close enough to that ship to be able to have a conversation and maybe pay them a visit.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot acknowledged the order.

“How long until we’re in position?”

“Two hours, commander.”

“I’ll put together a nice boarding party and a nasty one,” she muttered to herself. “You have the bridge, XO,” Shepard said with a sloppy salute to the senior lieutenant who ran things shipside as she went out and shot things.

“Aye, aye, sir,” the lieutenant said, but she didn’t take the command chair, instead, she very loudly asked the scanner tech where the shuttle had come from, before Shepard could make her escape. It was the nicest possible way of letting a superior officer know she was about to take action without asking a necessary question.

“Unclear, sir. No additional ships are showing up and our records show no recognized colonies. Though pirates, slavers and smugglers have been known to use Pragia, the fourth world, as a stash point. That would be my best guess, lieutenant.”

“Understood,” the lieutenant sat down in the command chair.

Shepard took in the new information and gave the XO a sharper salute and went in search of Hassan, to put him in charge of the nice boarding party. It took longer than she expected, because he had an absurd tendency to question everything and he really wanted an explanation for why they were bothering with this. He was not inclined to accept ‘because I’m bored,’ as an answer, so Shepard went with the argument that these were either good people trying to rescue folks who might well be pirates, or who might be innocent. If the former, they would need help, if the latter, it was all to the good that Project Overwatch make allies amongst the good people of the Terminus. Alternatively, if they were bad people themselves, the people they were rescuing might need rescuing themselves.

Samara volunteered to go along with both boarding parties, for all that Shepard could tell the justicar wanted to go on to their destination. Given the woman’s usual impressive unreadability, it was equally clear that whatever was wrong was unusual. The justicar hadn’t chosen to explain what her target had done, but it had to be fairly terrible, especially given what her engineers had reported finding in her previous target’s files. The experiment on sentients necessary to perfect the weapon he’d used to incapacitate the justicar and her escort had produced a number of corpses and as many people rendered into vegetables.

On their closest approach, Shepard informed the ship that she was sending over a boarding party to assist with rescue efforts. The ship attempted to argue that that wasn’t necessary, but as the _Mindoir_ had switched registrations immediately before making the communication and had revealed all its concealed weaponry, which the _Trafficker_ was well within the range of, they chose not to resist and they were too deep in the gravity well to escape.

After a moment’s thought, Shepard attached herself and Samara the nasty boarding party, leaving command of security for the nice one in Lieutenant Jennifer “Jennie” Rycroft’s capable hands and sent both shuttles out. The lieutenant had worked well with Hassan previously, even if she found his methods annoying, they seemed to work effectively together. Shepard had quite a bit of confidence in the lieutenant as they’d gone through N-School training together. The lieutenant had been one of the first she’d selected for Project Overwatch, as she was a solid non-political officer who’d been trapped in a dead-end posting on Earth, for years.

Shepard and the nasty team, geared up with the heaviest weapons on the _Mindoir_ , were met by the scruffiest looking Turian Shepard had ever encountered. The woman’s fringe was unpolished and untrimmed, growing in jagged edges and her uniform was so covered in old stains that Shepard couldn’t tell patches from original fabric and the ship patch was obscured. The shift in body language as Shepard’s troops secured the area around the airlock was fairly amusing. At first the Turian had clearly been intending not to be impressed by mere soldiery, but upon seeing Shepard and Samara, the woman’s body language practically screamed fear as her eyes slipped from the Bastion of Elysium to the Asari Matriarch.

Her voice didn’t shake, much, as she demanded that they withdraw, stating that they had no right to be here. On the other side of the ship, Hassan was doubtless making some argument about why they had a right to be here, probably something about them having been granted permission, even if such permission had been induced by the implied threat of being blown up. Shepard would have usually simply taken the view that the presence of a squad of heavily armed soldiers was all the authority she needed, but with Samara right beside her, she concluded that a little disingenuity was necessary.

“We’re here to assist in the rescue efforts,” she explained.

“There aren’t any survivors! There’s no help to be offered! And the shuttles are legitimate salvage!” the Turian’s exclamation points were as obvious as her terror. She intended to continue on along that line, but the announcement system screamed to life in a manner which suggested it hadn’t seen much use in the last few centuries.

“All personnel, as a courtesy to the System’s Alliance, we are going to show them around the ship and the salvage and corpses. We have nothing to hide, what with _everyone on the shuttles being dead_. It’s a real shame that _the survivors tried to hijack our ship and we had to defend ourselves_ , but it’s hardly our fault and we have nothing to hide. So don’t resist and answer any questions so we can just get back on our way.”

The captain’s voice had the rumbling tone of a Batarian, which, quite naturally put Shepard’s teeth on edge, as did the very obvious attempt to get everyone on the same page.

Her own comm system squawked in her ear. “Commander, I’ve gained the cooperation of the Captain. I’m heading to the bridge to pull the records of the rescue.”

“Pull their personnel records as well. I want to know how many people are supposed to be on this ship and where they all are,” Shepard ordered.

“Yes, commander.”

“Let’s start with the shuttles.”

“We took them into the cargo bay.”

“Lead the way,” Shepard ordered.

The Turian did not disagree, as Shepard was surrounded by enough firepower to simply blow her way through ship and crew alike until she found what she wanted. The ship was in terrible shape, with cluttered corridors, what appeared to be bloodstains and a combination of battle damage and a complete lack of maintenance. When Shepard asked, the Turian claimed that none of their boarders reached this area, which made the battle damage a bit of a mystery.

The cargo bay was a disaster. There had most definitely been a battle. Three cargo containers were shattered, two by grenades and one by some sort of heavy weapon. A glance around revealed a ML-77 Rocket Launcher lying beside one of the corpses. The bodies had been pulled into a line, half a dozen Humans all killed by weapons-fire, but showing signs of injuries that had been treated before the battle. Shepard moved forward to examine them more closely, waving the squad’s medic forward to join her.

Samara moved away, examining the room, recreating the battle in her mind as the Turian blithered on about what had happened. From what Samara could make out from the battle damage she was, broadly speaking, telling the truth. There were clusters of fire where the ship’s crew would have taken cover and some specks of blood. The crew of the shuttle hadn’t gone down without a fight and the fight had happened in the cargo bay, rather than within the shuttle-craft as she would have expected if the ship’s crew had launched an unprovoked attack.

She slid into the shuttle to confirm that and saw a standard shuttlecraft with room for eight passengers and two crew. Six was running light, but since she didn’t know where they’d come from, she couldn’t determine what that meant. A glance around revealed signs of occupancy in six of the passenger seats and the pilot’s seat. Odd that. A less experienced eye wouldn’t have noticed that the blood marking the seats was not smeared from casual contact, but pooled from someone sitting in each seat for a long time with minimal medical treatment. It was possible one of them had got up during the flight and taken another seat upon returning, but none of the bloodstains were in exactly the same place.

While Samara was examining that, Shepard had finished examining the bodies. They were wearing good quality clothing, light armor in fact. White and black, with a patch she’d never seen before on their arm. It might have been a ship badge, or a corporate one, but her HUD didn’t identify it, so it was from the Terminus of the Traverse.

“Did you lose anyone?”

“Alucius was caught in the blast from that damn missile launcher. He’s in the waste disposal.”

“Why didn’t you dump them?” Shepard asked.

“We wouldn’t do that—“ the woman’s voice faltered under Shepard’s state and continued more honestly, “not when their might be a bounty on their head, or a reward for returning them to whoever they work for.”

“Fine. Justicar, are you ready to head over to the other shuttle?” the Turian grew even more anxious at the sound of Samara’s title.*

_*That wasn’t terribly surprising as more than a millennium of alliance and the Asari cultural dominance had left the Turians and Salarians with a surprising amount of familiarity with Asari culture._

“Yes, commander,” Samara said, walking out of the shuttle.

“This one came in with only one Human in it. He was dead when we got the shuttle open. His head was bashed in,” the Turian explained, leading them to the other cargo bay quickly.

Samara kept her eyes on the Turian and stopped suddenly when the woman’s body language changed from ‘scared because she’s surrounded by heavily armed strangers’ to ‘terrified that those heavily armed strangers are going to find something.’

She glanced around, walking slowly as everyone else stopped and stared at her. Her own eyes remained on the Turian as she circled the group. There wasn’t much room, because the cargo bay was packed with cargo containers. The others stared at her, but didn’t ask any questions for a moment. When the Turian’s body language announced that her terror had hit a peak, Samara raised a hand, biotics flared and the container ripped open.

Samara saw the flash of a blade, held by a large Human, near the throat of a smaller, bound, Human. He opened his mouth, “Back off, or I’ll cut her—“

Samara moved before he could finish his threat, let alone carry it out. Her hand still raised, it flared with biotic power and she **pulled** the knife out of his hand. The blade hit the bulkhead behind Samara with some force, as the **pull** which would have gently lifted a sentient, ripped it across the way at significant speed, though not enough to have been a threat to any of the armored soldiers.

He lifted his hands, stepping away from the smaller Human and Samara stepped forward, sliding between the man and the girl. He backed further away and she grabbed his shirt, powered by fury and hundreds of years of exercise, hurling him out of the cargo container.

Shepard had moved so she could see into the cargo container about the same time as the voice and the knife had come out of it. Her dark skin paled slightly in rage as she spun on the Turian, while two of her guards grabbed the large Human.

“What the ever-loving fuck?”

“Okay, that looks bad,” the Turian said, stepping back in the face of Shepard’s tone. “But there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”

“Right,” Shepard’s voice was low and cold. “One moment.” She didn’t kill her external comms, as she called up Lieutenant Rycroft. “Jennie, take the ship.”

The Turian tried to object, but was silenced by a knife-like glance from Samara, who was examining the prisoner, keeping her armored body between the restrained girl and the onlookers. After a moment’s thought, she tried again. “Yes, there was one survivor, but she attacked us just like the rest. We didn’t kill her because she’s just a child. And we didn’t tell you about her because we didn’t know how you would treat the poor child.”

“Very convincing.” The Turian made a move to speak and Shepard spoke over her, “except for the fact that she was tied up _naked_. That’s what makes your whole story a little suspicious,” the venom in her voice pushed the Turian back another step, and another until she was stopped by a bulkhead.

Samara examined the prisoner. She clearly hadn’t reached full maturity, though it was difficult for an Asari to estimate the age of other sentients; her hair was cropped shorter than most of the other Human females Samara had seen, to expose a port at the base of her spine. The metal implant was scratched and an array of small scars surrounded it, awkward, clearly self-inflicted as she attempted to remove the port. Her arms were restrained, as one would with a biotic, which the pattern of muscle development and callouses made it clear she was. Thin and wiry, the girl’s other scars were worrisome in number, but not the sort you would expect to see on an abused child. There were some medical scars, straight lines from scalpels, centered on the most likely spots for Eezo to migrate in a Human female’s body, but others were like Samara’s own scars. Injuries inflicted by biotic combat. Unsurprising on an Asari Justicar, surprising on a Human child.

The girl was clearly awake and pretending to be asleep, an attempt at cunning which was doomed to failure by Samara’s experience and her own inexperience. Samara was certain of that, for all that Human body language wasn’t a perfect analogue for the Asari, the girl was simply not a good actor. For a moment she considered speaking to her while she was still restrained, but given the girl’s obvious mistreatment, talking to her while she was restrained seemed like it would send the wrong message. Samara completed her examination in a few moments, then turned her attention to the girl’s bonds.

After puzzling out the restraints, Samara unbound the girl, whose eyes snapped open the moment she was unbound and struck out at her, biotic power swirling around her fist. The power was a **warp** , intended to rip Samara apart, but the justicar reacted instantly, summoning a **warp** into her own hand to ensure that like energies deflected one another.

The girl’s other hand launched a powerful blow at Samara’s midsection, automatically launching a **throw** , which would have detonated the **warp** had the attack landed on her. Samara summoned her **barrier** instantly and the hand which had blocked the **warp** wrapped itself around the girl’s free hand, holding onto her as the **throw** bounced harmlessly off her defenses, not even managing to stagger the justicar. A **barrier** leapt up around the girl as well, intending to absorb that explosion. Samara was impressed. Not with the tactic, as it was a standard one for any biotic adept, but everything happened in no more time than it took the woman to launch the combination of physical blows. The sheer speed of the attacks was better than most matrons could have mustered, and the girl had as much power as Samara herself could have mustered.

The justicar pulled the girl to her feet and flicked her further into the cargo container and away from the conflict outside. The whole thing was over before anyone outside the container knew anything had begun. And the girl paused for a moment, as she began to realize that Samara was not affiliated with the man on his knees behind her, held at gunpoint by armored soldiers. Soldiers not in the armor of those she feared and hated. Or hated and feared, to put the words in the right order.

Torn between shielding the girl and clearing her path to the exit, so it was clear Samara didn’t intend to keep her trapped, she took two steps out of the way, and kept her hands extended from her sides. “They will not hurt you,” she said in her most calming tones. Her words were entirely true, if it was necessary to harm the girl, she would do it herself. It would be horribly unpleasant, but Samara had done harder things when it was necessary under the Code.

“That’s why! She’s a powerful biotic and used her clothes in her biotic attacks on us!” the Human burst out. The Turian gave him a look of such utter contempt that Shepard almost didn’t bother to respond to that stupidity.

“You know,” she said, lifting a hand and letting biotic power flare around it, in full view of both members of the ship’s crew and their former prisoner, “I’ve only been a practicing biotic for a little more than a decade, while Samara has what, a millennia of experience as a biotic?”

“Somewhat less, but closer to that than nine hundred,” Samara said, eyes not leaving the trembling, naked girl in front of her. The trembling was from cold, not fear, she was sure of that, mostly because the girl was staring at Samara with something approaching awe. Probably because Samara hadn’t even been moved by an attack which would have flattened most adepts. Or, it could have been her age, non-Asari sentients often found that extremely impressive, or disconcerting. In her maiden days, several of her lovers had found it extremely off-putting that she was older than their parents.

“I’ve never used my clothes in biotic combat. Have you?” Shepard asked, her voice low and cold.

“No,” Samara’s gaze never wavered.

“I’ve never even heard of anyone doing that. Have you?” Shepard asked, rhetorically.

“Yes. But it was an ancient martial art which did not survive the development of modern body armor composites and is currently only practiced as a matter of tradition,” the girl’s eyes flared with interest at the discussion of a biotic art she was unfamiliar with. That was useful to know.

“Huh. Interesting,” Shepard said. “Now, let’s try this again. Do you want to tell me what happened, or should I just ask her and write you off as a bunch of lying, kidnapping assholes, in need of a bullet in the head?”

Words spilled from the Turian’s mouth as Samara slowly approached the girl, hands spread, clearly empty, but prepared to defend against any strike. She was careful to leave the girl a way out, if she wanted to take it. When she was close enough to converse casually, she politely asked the girl’s name, offering her own.

The girl’s gaze was suspicious. “They call me Subject Zero,” she shrank back slightly at those words.

Samara caught the nuance, just in time, “And what do you call yourself?”

The girl didn’t look down, but Samara caught a hint of nervous defiance and a hint of just plain nervousness as the girl confessed to the name “Jack.” She seemed to expect some sort of reaction from Samara to the name, but since she didn’t know why, or what was expected, she simply nodded politely.

“Jack. I am Samara, a Justicar of the Code. They are soldiers with the System’s Alliance. Can you tell me what happened?” Samara was surreptitiously beginning to look for some clothing for the girl, but the cargo bay was understandably short of outfits and everyone on her side was wearing armor which simply couldn’t be handed over.

“Here? These assholes jumped me on the way off the ship. They were all soft words until I unlocked the hatch, then…” her voice drifted for a moment, then strengthened. “There was no biotic juice on the shuttle,* so I couldn’t refuel after fighting my way out of that hellhole,” she waved in the general direction of downward.

_*This was true. The shuttle had a full set of standard emergency supplies, including rations. Unfortunately, they weren’t anything like the food which Jack was used to and they were stored behind the universal symbol for emergency supplies, which Jack did not know. Indeed, her reading skills were generally weak, though they were strong enough to hit the buttons for emergency takeoff and autopilot. That training was back when they were thinking about using her as an agent, as well as a guinea pig. That plan had died, along with most of her training and interaction in the first escape attempt._

“What hellhole?” Samara asked, barely controlling the urge to shoot a dark and threatening look at the crew of the ship.

Footsteps behind her and the shift in Jack’s attention warned Samara that someone was behind her. She automatically stepped between Jack and the approaching person, and turned to face the entrance. It was one of the soldiers in Shepard’s escort squad, carrying clothes looted from the crew quarters on Shepard’s orders. A woman, because though Shepard didn’t _know_ why the girl was naked, she had her suspicions and no survivor of Mindoir could fail to be aware of how to deal with a suspected rape survivor. And not sending a heavily armed man to her was high on the list.

The woman tried to close the gap, but a hand from Samara brought her up short and had her pass over the cloth bundle. The justicar did not approach the girl, or toss it to her, as either might trigger an automatic and violent response. Instead she simply extended a hand holding the clothing and waited for Jack to decide how she wanted to get the clothing.

The girl approached slowly and snatched the clothing, then pulled it on awkwardly, always keeping one hand free to attack. Someone else approached from behind them. Samara turned again, still positioning herself as Jack’s protector.

“We pulled the memory cores of the shuttles. They’re from a base down on Pragia.”

“We will need to deal with that,” Samara said instantly, though the tension of delaying her mission was clear in her body language.

“It needs to be dealt with,” Shepard said. “Do you want to go back there?” she asked Jack.

“Never,” Jack snapped, as she finally got fully dressed. Her short cropped black hair had gotten stuck on the collar of the shirt, which she’d handled by simply pulling quite hard and ripping out a couple of hairs, to which undeniable pain she simply hadn’t reacted. That fact was somehow almost as disturbing as the fear in a girl who’d reacted to being tied up naked with fury, not fear.

“Do not worry, Jack, you can stay on the _Mindoir,_ while we handle it,” Samara said.

“Justicar, is there some reason you have to go down there?” Shepard asked politely.

“We can’t let them get away with what they’ve done,” Samara said, furiously.

“Of course not, but we have two ships and two squads. From what we found, the facility was mostly destroyed before the flight. One squad of troops is plenty. Besides, we said we’d get you to Chalkhos.”

“You only have one ship,” Samara countered.

“No, we took this one, remember when I told Jennie to do that? It’s ours now.”

“Oh,” Samara considered that under the Code. Confiscating the property of criminals was acceptable. Indeed, most of her own weapons had been taken from criminals who attempted to kill her. Usually they were dead, however. On the other hand, she could feel Jack’s presence behind her. She had no doubt that they were criminals. Loss of their ship was the least of the punishment they deserved. A point she intended to make, forcefully, when the opportunity arose. And as for any survivors down in what Jack referred to as the ‘hellhole’ there would be consequences.

“You really don’t have to do everything yourself, Justicar.”

“Indeed not. I have spent so long working alone. It is…pleasant to work with honorable warriors.”

“It is indeed, Justicar” Shepard agreed, her gaze on the justicar.

“Call me Samara.”

“Of course.”

“Will you come with us, or lead the team down to the planet?” Samara asked.

“I’ll let you know,” Shepard said, thinking.

That question had been bothering Shepard since she realized they’d need to split their forces. The _Mindoir_ had to take the prisoners and should remain here to deal with the base on Pragia. Though it was supposed to be basically uninhabited, the command ship’s heavier weapons might well be needed if it was not, while no ship based weapons should be needed when finding a single criminal, no matter how much Samara was concerned about her.

She wasn’t going to fall into the same trap Samara had, of believing she needed to do everything. From what Jack was now explaining to the justicar, it seemed clear that the facility was intended to house biotics, so Jennie might do as well as Shepard could, perhaps even better. More crucially, given that all those who had assaulted the ship were Human, it seemed that this was not merely a strategic problem, but quite possibly a political one as well. Especially since Shepard had a hard time believing that any of the independent colonies had the ability to put together an operation like this.

Fortunately, she had someone forced upon her for political reasons, who could handle that. She would head to Chalkhos, handle the criminal, maybe do a bit of studying and training with a thousand year old Asari justicar, maybe try to help out an abused, but powerful adept…

* * *

## 2177 CE Chalkhos

Jack had been left on the ship, over her strenuous and repeated objections. The girl did not like to be left alone and she did not view the crew of the ship as interesting, or acceptable company. Shepard was generally leaving the girl in Samara’s hands, because the justicar’s patience was infinite and Shepard’s was not.

Samara had explained at some length why Jack wasn’t going, then she’d explained to Shepard a different reason. Specifically that their target was apparently able to influence people when they got close enough. Jack under the influence of a centuries old mass-murderer was not something any of them wanted to see, especially as Shepard was somewhat embarrassed to discover a pubescent girl was more powerful than her.

The discovery that their target was Samara’s daughter made Jack’s absence even more explicable, at least to Shepard, who’d watched the aged justicar training the girl. Shepard had tried to get the woman’s location out of what passed for the planetary government, with no success, however, when Samara arrived, the locals had instantly provided her all the assistance she requested. It was hard to tell if it was fear, or awe which inspired their obedience, but Shepard couldn’t deny its effectiveness.

Their target was holed up in a small farming village. They had to use the shuttle to get there as the planet had a distinct absence of infrastructure. It was not a subtle approach, so it was not a surprise that a greeting party met Samara and Shepard as they approached. It was something of a surprise that the entire village was Asari* and that they had turned out to the last woman, if some of the tiniest amongst them could even be called women, rather than girls.

_*Though Morinth took her prey from all different species, when she took followers amongst the Asari, she insisted that they mate only with other Asari, because she hoped to create others like her._

Shepard had not truly believed, not in her bones, the power an Ardat-Yakshi could have over her followers. It seemed like something out of a bad fantasy story, mind control, vampirism, magic…

But seeing the throng there, armed with farming instruments, prepared to kill, or die for Morinth, even against a justicar, especially after seeing the rest of the planet damn near kneel at Samara’s booted feet, now she could believe it, though not feel it. Not until Morinth stepped out onto a raised platform in the village square, clearly visible, though the Asari wall of bodies prevented any move towards her, even the **charge** Shepard had been considering before she felt Morinth’s presence.

The force of the lives the woman had taken gave her an astounding presence, as if she was denser than the surrounding universe. “You know, mother, dear, you might, just might have been able to get through these,” her hand waved in casual patterns, “my worshippers. Still, you were wise to bring an ally, but so very, very foolish to bring a Human,” Morinth’s attention turned from Samara to Shepard and the vanguard shuddered under the weight of that regard. “ _See me_. _Know me. Obey me. Kill her._ ”

Shepard shuddered, hands twitching toward her weapons, despite her best efforts and she managed a single word. “Fire.”

Morinth’s beautiful eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second and then her head exploded, releasing Shepard. The throng of her worshippers turned as her body hit the ground, as the snipers Shepard had dropped off on the way in were too far out for them to hear the simultaneous shots that shattered **barriers** , flesh, bone and brain alike. Every single soldier who was sniper qualified had been brought and dropped off. The remaining few troops were guarding their ship. Heavy sniper rifles, fired with full targeting assist at a stationary target, were not going to miss, even at the range of half a mile out to two miles that the soldiers were firing from and neither **barriers** , nor shields, nor helmet (had she been wearing such) would stop such a barrage of fire. She would have stood some chance of survival had they not been coordinated to fire in sequence, based on proximity, to ensure the rounds impacted the target at the same time, so that the first impact didn’t knock her out of the way of the remainder.

Shepard had intended to let Samara talk to her daughter, try to talk her down, or just get say goodbye. That hadn’t happened. The heavy pistol came off her hip and halfway up towards the throng of worshippers who had now been denied their goddess. Samara stopped Shepard’s rising hands and then walked forward. With Morinth dead, they just gave ground, in shock. Samara ignored them completely, kneeling before her daughter’s body. Shepard saw no hesitation as the justicar produced an inferno grenade, slid it under the woman’s body and walked away. She was careful to make sure that none of the shocked throng of worshippers were within the blast zone and stayed clear. Everything by the book, Shepard thought. Then she corrected the thought, no, it was everything by the Code.

Her dark eyes didn’t leave her daughters corpse, even as the grenade went off and melted it to ash, leaving not even genetic residue, nothing that would permit anyone to gather genetic material of an Ardat-Yakshi.

Shepard had agreed to destroy the body, if Samara wasn’t able to, in order to prevent exactly that threat, but there was something wrong with that…

The Ardat-Yakshi were ill. Why wouldn’t every medical institute in the galaxy have samples of their DNA, so that a cure might be worked on?

That question was driven out of her mind by the shriek of a distraught child as the force of Morinth’s personality dissipated, turning the mob into just a group of frightened people, who scattered from corpse and heavily armed strangers alike. Some frightened children were shielded by their parents, others, braver, were pulled along by parents equally protective. Whether it was standard behavior, or reaction to how close they’d come to sacrificing their children in service of a monster.

Shepard stood in silence, not impatient, mostly because when Samara stopped staring at the spot where her daughter had been, she’d have to talk to the justicar and she really wasn’t sure what to say. Shepard had done the “I’m sorry your child died under my command,” letters and conversation, but it was a bit different when she hadn’t died under your command, but at your command.

“Let us leave,” Samara said.

Shepard couldn’t not ask, her early conditioning was better than Jack’s, but had left indelible marks on her, despite the impact of marine training and N-school training, she was still a polite woman and so, despite the stupidity of the question, it just slipped out. “Is there anything I can do?” She had managed to not ask if Samara was all right, which was what her instincts suggested.

"Shepard. What can I say? What do you want me to say? I just killed the smartest and bravest of my daughters. There are no words. I will try another time. For now, show mercy on a broken old warrior and let us leave."

Shepard nodded and they went back to the shuttle in silence. A series of sharp looks kept the soldiers silent on the way back to the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


	13. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Blake’s 7. This is a very short chapter. Sorry about that.

## 254.3 NC Earth

Earth died.

There was no warning. No grand final battle. The enemy simply appeared outside the range of their detectors and began to fire at where the Earth would be when the rounds arrived. The math wasn’t particularly difficult and there was nothing to be done. The Federation ships could not detect the, comparatively, tiny rounds moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

The comet detectors, which might well have detected objects that size, for the purpose of shielding the ship, simply weren’t sensitive enough to detect objects moving that fast and the combat sensors couldn’t detect objects that size.

Of course, even if they had been able to detect the rounds, their options were limited. A plasma bolt would vaporize any unshielded ballistic projectile and could undoubtedly hit them as they travelled on a ballistic course significantly slower than the light-speed travels of the plasma bolts. However, the enemy appeared to be able to fire an essentially limitless number of their ballistic rounds, while each plasma bolt would drain the firing ship’s energy banks. A battleship might be able to fire a thousand shots, before its banks ran dry, but pursuit ships would run out of energy after some few dozen shots.

Shots rained down on city and factory, port and ocean, people and empty field. The enemy did not bother with precise targeting, simply raining down fire until every living thing on the planet was dead. The armies of the Federation died to the last, without firing a shot in their own defense.

The Alphas died in their towers, the Betas in their apartments, the Gammas and Deltas in their ghettos. There was no time for riots, there was no time for anything. The Fleet quickly figured out that there were four task groups firing simultaneously on Earth, sweeping over the globe from all angles, too fast for anyone to take cover, even if any warning had made it through the usual Federation censorship, which held, despite the unusual circumstances.

Fleet vessels raced toward the zones the ships had fired from, the reserves leaping in to attack and found nothing. The enemy had clearly decided to simply avoid them until their ships died from lack of fuel.

Earth died, without an opportunity to fight back and without extracting any price at all from the enemy. Oh, Servalan gave a speech about denying them, about hurting them back, revenge, fire and blood. Though she did not give that speech until after three ships had mutinied. What they hoped to accomplish with their mutinies, no one could say, as everyone involved was massacred by the few mutoids onboard.

There were mutters everywhere, people talking about running for the colonies, grabbing family and hightailing it into deep space. Those mutters died as Servalan let word leak out of what had happened in the colonies and what was happening. The enemy had abandoned all attempts at conquest and chose instead to simply eliminate everyone.

With that change, the only option available was to spit in the face of those who had taken so much from them. In the battle between defiance and despair, neither Servalan, nor Blake was inclined to tilt towards despair.

The desire to strike back was powerful and focused, not against those who had committed the genocide, but against those who had failed to prevent it, despite the fact that they had justified their crimes, their cruelties and their power on the idea that they would protect humanity. And now they had failed. Even amongst those wearing the uniform and badge of the Federation, there was discontent. Only the patent pointlessness of striking against the remnants of the Federation prevented it from spreading.

Earth was dead and Servalan had to figure out how, exactly she was going to strike back. So, she gave the order and the full might of the Federation moved out. Or at least, as much of the full might remained, with half the fleet destroyed and all the armies fallen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments always welcome.


	14. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cerberus gets involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Mass Effect. Events are beginning to speed up now, as we race towards the actual meeting.

## 2177 CE _SSV_ _Mindoir,_ Caleston Rift Cluster

“How long will it take for a message to get to Arcturus?” Hassan asked the communications officer.

“If we give it highest priority? Ten days.”

“And as many back?”

“Unless they send a courier vessel, that could get back here as fast as five days.”

“Even if we head for the Merchant’s Union Station? _*_ ”

_*The Merchant’s Union handles the traffic in the Terminus which has to get where it’s going, as they have contracts with all the main mercenary groups. They’re more expensive than a tramp freighter, but far more reliable. They are a major player in the Terminus, one of the few which spans the territory of multiple warlords and gangs. They also proclaim themselves a court of universal jurisdiction over the laws of space._

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” he said and left the bridge.

Lieutenant Jennifer Rycroft intercepted him on the way back to his quarters. “You have a moment to talk?” She asked.

“Just writing reports, I’d welcome a distraction,” Hassan said, opening the door and waving her into the small office that he’d set up in his entrance hall.

“Thanks, Hassan,” she said, politely waiting for him to sit down and wave her into a seat across the desk from him.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I’m putting together my own AAR* and, well, I’m just trying to get my head around what we saw down there. It’s hard to believe…”

_*After Action Report, outlining the actions taken and reviewing decisions made._

“We have vids, recordings, documentation, prisoners and eight rescued kids. Be a bit hard to fake.”

“I wasn’t actually questioning if it was real,” Jennie said, leaning back in her chair and waving a hand dismissively. “Just hard to believe people could do that. And to kids.”

Hassan nodded, “Maybe I’m just jaded from law school and working the criminal side of things. Nothing convinces you people are gross like studying torts, except working on criminal cases.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” Jennie asked.

“File our reports, get the ball rolling. What else? Unless you know something about where this…Cerberus is operating?”

“We do have to trust the chain of command,” Jennie agreed.

Hassan shrugged. “I didn’t say that.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Well, whether we trust them or not, I guess we don’t have any other choice.”

“Not on what our first step has to be,” he muttered, looking down at his filed.

“Hassan…what are you talking about?”

He looked up and hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, it won’t be a secret. My report states then I intend to release the full information regarding Cerberus’s activities on Pragia, unless I receive countermanding orders.”

“There’s no way command’s going to let this get out. They’ll be running an internal investigation and won’t want to warn these bastards we’re coming.”

“Which is why I will be releasing the information in twelve days unless I’m ordered not to,” Hassan explained.

“What does that cha—“ the light dawned in her eyes and she paused for a moment. “Can a message even get her from Arcturus that fast?”

“Not when you include the time it’ll take for the message to get to them,” Hassan said, pulling up the report and adding the timeframes and checking the listed date was correct.

“So, you’re just going to unilaterally reveal this to the galaxy? How the hell do you think the Citadel Council’s going to react that?” Jennie asked, rising to her feet and looming above him.

“I doubt it will come to that. Twelve days is more time than it’ll take to get to them. They’ll have time to release the information themselves and when given no choice, they will do so rather than be publicly embarrassed in that fashion.”

“So you’re strong arming the entire Alliance?” Jennie asked, leaning over his desk, hand coming to rest on the old style wrought iron picture frame, which surrounded the physical photograph of Hassan and his family.

“I prefer to view myself as playing the role of Jiminy Cricket.”

“Don’t you think you should talk to the Commander about this first?” she asked, plaintively.

“And put the responsibility for this on her? No. Better to maintain plausible deniability. A silly mistake by a bureaucrat who failed to understand the realities of modern communications. Unfortunate, perhaps fire-able, but no more than that. And, unlikely to rise to any sort of formal action, as it would be extremely difficult to explain once they’d released the news.”

“Command doesn’t need to do anything formal to transfer your ass to a Lunar training base where you can spend the rest of your career dealing with trainee idiocy!” Jennie argued.

“And? I’ve been in for almost ten years. If I want to retire, I give my notice and I’m out within the month. After that…well, I’ve got a standing offer from the Polari University School of Law on Thessia,” he laughed quietly, “and from the way some of the Asari have been staring at me, I might also do very well as an importer of gay porn on Thessia. There are worse fates.”

“Seriously?”

“Probably not. They’ve got the extranet there. So, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of free porn, of all varieties. How did we get on the topic of porn? I’m going to be lucky if I don’t have to defend myself in front of the MJ-CRC.*”

_*Military Justice-Civil Rights Court._

“I meant are you serious about flushing your career down the disposal for this?”

“I’d hardly have told you if I wasn’t,” he said with a grin. “I’m not looking to be talked out of it, if that’s what you’re thinking. Now, if you have an actual reason I shouldn’t do this. Something I haven’t considered over the last week, I’m happy to hear it.”

“Well, did you think of the fact that this Cerberus is probably not going to be real pleased with you and they’ve got the resources to build a base out here, kidnap more than a hundred kids from Alliance space and secure a base with twenty guards and twice as many researchers. You think they won’t decide to blow your brains out?”

“No, I don’t think they will, as the moment the information goes out, killing me becomes a thoroughly pointless, even counterproductive endeavor.”

“Fair point,” Jennie straightened, suddenly cheerful. “I’m starving, come on down to the mess, join me for lunch and we’ll see if we can come up with an idea that doesn’t end with you flushing your career down the toilet.”

“I really don’t think that’s necess—“

“Come on,” she punched him in the shoulder. “Humor the woman who saved your life a dozen times.” The shift from the aggressive, but collected soldier to this amusing and playful woman was surprising. It might be that she’d caught the reference to his sexuality, that sometimes produced a response somewhat akin to this one, but he didn’t think so. The same training and instincts he used when questioning a witness niggled at him.

He covered his concern well, laughing as he stood up. “I don’t remember it being a dozen times.”

Jennie stepped aside and waved him past her. As Hassan passed, he felt something else, instincts that he’d honed on Akuze screamed at him and he reacted. As he jerked forward, he felt a hand punch the side of his neck, knocking him to the ground. Jennie’s arm had tried to go around his throat, but his sudden movement had turned that into a blow. The lawyer snapped upright as she approached, swearing, dropping the injector she’d been holding in her free hand.

She’d been going to incapacitate him, then inject him, he concluded in an instant as he swung to the side to avoid a savage kick that hit the wall where his chest had been. The second he moved, he realized he’d been herded back towards the desk and away from the exit. He got his hands up in time to absorb the pair of fast, light blows that drove him back against the wall. There was no way he was going to win this fight, not against a graduate of the N-School. Especially as his brain was focused on the question of why exactly she was trying to kill him.

For an instant, he considered trying to bull rush her. He was bigger than her, heavier, though not by all that much. Brain overriding machismo, he instead feinted forward and retreated into his bedroom, keying the door shut and locked, just in time. The door wasn’t going to stay shut for long. Jennie was no engineer, but she wouldn’t have to be to dump omni-gel and processing power into overriding the lock. It was just a civilian model as the engineers hadn’t gotten around to updating the internal locks to military grade and it was low on the list of fixes for the converted pirate ship.

He brought the omni-tool to his mouth and keyed the comm system to life, then swore to himself as it gave him only static. He’d automatically turned on the privacy shield when he went into his quarters. It was intended to ensure security for his meetings and maintain privacy for any privileged conversations he had.

A quick glance around the room and he saw the comm unit by the door was still live. He had to override the privacy settings, but that was just a matter of inputting his password. The unit was connected directly to the comm officer, who would use it to send out announcements in the event of an emergency and it could work the reverse direction as well, which would save him, so long as the comm officer wasn’t in on this. He heard the door starting to whine as the lock fought the hack.

There was nothing to lose and everything to gain from making the attempt. If nothing else, it might leave a record that an investigator would find and, as he’d dodged the injection, an investigation was likely. Especially since his body couldn’t simply disappear, not onboard ship. There would have to be an explanation and whatever one Jennie had planned would no longer work.

He opened the channel and talked over the comm officer. “I need security in my quarters. Lieutenant Rycroft is trying to kill me.” There was a sputtering response, but he just kept going. “This is not a joke. Security is needed immediately. Armed and armored. She is N-Series. Be prepared to—FUCK—“

The door opened and Jennie swung the picture frame like a club, almost catching Hassan’s hand and smashing the comm unit. The picture frame was the only sturdy, unsecured object in his office, warships not being big on things which would turn into ballistic missiles if the gravity failed. Hassan dodged back, caught his foot on the edge of the bed and fell back, bashing his head on the wall, sending sparks around the edge of his vision.

Jennie closed in and Hassan managed an instinctive kick that drove her back a step, though her instinctive block brought the picture frame hard enough against his leg to leave him numb from the knee down. He managed to make it halfway to his feet and snapped into a roll across the bed avoiding the other wall of the narrow sleep cubby. With a little distance, he tried for the exit, only to have to dodge back to avoid Jennie’s blow. The marine had claimed the doorway, blocking any escape, but if she tried to advance, he could retreat to the other side of the room, the bed providing a useful barrier.

Or at least, it did until she hit the control for the bed, which had been by the comm unit, but not smashed with the comm unit and sent the bed back into its recessed compartment in the wall. Hassan swore silently, hands rising into a defensive posture as he tried to remember the basic self-defense training he’d had a long time ago and wished he’d paid more attention to. At the time he’d taken the view that it was irrelevant given firearms and body-armor. That had proven true up until this exact moment.

Realizing that his combat skills were insufficient for the task at hand, Hassan opened his hands, spreading them. “You want to talk about this, Jennie? Tell me what the problem is. You can’t seriously be Cerberus, right?” It was the only thing he could think of, though there was little thought involved, it was merely a matter of words spilling desperately out of his mouth. “You aren’t the type to go around kidnapping kids. You’re a soldier, not—“

She ignored his attempt to talk and instead moved forward, launching a quick series of blows. Hassan, hands spread wide, was almost defenseless. He managed to evade the blows that were slowed by the heavy cast iron picture frame, unfortunately Jennie used that to drive him into the wall and a nasty series of blows from her left that left him stunned and stumbling.

Hassan responded by lowering his shoulder and rushing forward, Jennie dodged, dropping the picture frame and grabbed Hassan by the shoulders as he passed, kicked him behind the knee and yanked him back, landing him flat on the ground, picture frame digging into his back. With her main weapon lost, Hassan curled into a tight ball, arms shielding his head.

Blows rained down on him, powerful kicks trying to force him to uncurl, but he held tight, until the blows stopped, then it occurred to him that if she went for the injector, this might still end very, very badly for him. Uncurling cautiously, he looked up and got arms between himself and the stomping kick that would have flattened his face. Instead it simply knocked him backwards, but before he could get into a protective curl, Jennie was on top of him, sliding into place so her legs locked his shoulders down and her hands found his throat, choking the life from him.

Hassan arched and struggled, bringing his legs up, managing to knee her in the back, which didn’t do a damn thing, as he lacked sufficient leverage to do anything except help her press down on his windpipe. He tried to jerk himself upwards, but lacked the muscles necessary to do a sit up with a hundred and fifty pounds of woman sitting on his chest. It occurred to him, odd though thinking it was at that moment, that he really wished he’d taken the mandatory exercise period more seriously. He’d focused on cardio, assuming he’d be able to run away from his enemies, which was very definitely not the case with her kneeling atop him. All his efforts accomplished was to drive his throat further into her grip. The whole time his hands had been pounding on her thighs and stomach, but without being able to move his shoulders, the blows were almost completely ineffective.

It takes a surprisingly long time to choke someone to death, especially as Hassan’s writhing did get him a little slack every few moments, enough to get a fraction of a breath. But Hassan’s vision was blurring and his writhing, mostly futile struggles were weakening. He did not see his life pass before his eyes, a fact for which he was obscurely grateful. Nor were his thoughts resting on any particular unfinished business, or family, or love.

They rather circled the rather prosaic point that this was bloody _embarrassing_. He was being murdered by a comrade-at-arms, in his own bedroom, helpless and a failure. Some part of him tried to be ashamed that that was going to be his last thought, tried to think of family and friends, tried to feel guilty about not thinking about them, but his overwhelming irritation at the situation ate it all as darkness ate his vision, mind, self…

As the darkness swallowed him, the door slid open and two fuzzy figures swung through, grabbing Jennie, one on each arm and ripping her off him.

Hassan curled up, coughing and gasping as his lungs and brain tried to gather enough oxygen to make him functional again. 

Jennie for her part was fighting hard against the pair of armored guards. They had not, in fact, brought weapons, which was good, as Jennie managed to break out of their grip, but without any ability to penetrate their body armor, even her superior skill wasn’t much use. Her hand had sought the common weapon anchor points, to no avail. If they’d had guns, she would have taken them, but as it was she couldn’t hurt them at all.

It took a little longer for them to corner her than for him get up, though the lawyer had the sense to not interfere with combat amongst the actual soldiers. Finally they managed to pin her down, as another pair of guards showed up. Finally they hauled her off, one of them on each of her limbs, carrying her struggling self to the brig that was occupied by the pirates and the surviving Pragia staff members.

Hassan was in the medbay, getting the doc to examine the rapidly purpling bruises on his throat and, quite frankly, the rest of him. So it was that he was sitting in his underwear when Lieutenant Aliyev arrived to ask what the fuck had led the senior marine onboard to attempt to murder the JAG Officer. The naval lieutenant was not pleased to discover that Hassan didn’t know (suspect was not the same as know). And he did not believe in internalizing that frustration.

The doctor, no shrinking violet, made it through the cursing and the turning bright red, but when the lieutenant added throwing things to his repertoire he ordered the older man out of his sickbay until he’d finished treating Hassan. One look at the doc’s stern gaze and the lieutenant wilted slightly and went off to yell at his own subordinates.

Patching Hassan up didn’t actually take that long, most of the time was spent lining the various scanners up with the lawyer’s various visible bruises and running quick check to make sure there wasn’t any unexpected (or expected, for that matter) internal bleeding or swelling. There wasn’t. A quick check of the injector, retrieved from his quarters at his request,* revealed a fast acting and fast metabolizing neurotoxin, which, when combined with a tiny dose of medigel would have made it look like Hassan had had a stroke and healed up the tiny injection site wound, leaving apparent natural causes as the cause of his narrowly-avoided death.

_*As a JAG Officer, Hassan was outside the chain of command and had no authority to issue orders._

The unpleasant medical part over, it was time for the unpleasant professional part to begin. Hassan took his time dressing (once he’d gotten back to his quarters, as taking his time dressing in front of the very nice, but far too serious young doctor would have sent entirely the wrong message) sliding into his most formal court uniform, ribbons properly arrayed, the high collar hiding almost all of the bruises, save one livid one, left by her thumb, right above his Adam’s apple. The insignia of his service went above the ribbons, claiming him for an attorney. A man of words and thought. So really, the fact that he’d nearly gotten murdered in his own bedroom wasn’t embarrassing at all.

He glanced in the mirror and tried very hard to convince himself that was true.

After giving it up as a bad job, he grabbed the completely decorative cap, which he would be carrying everywhere, as you didn’t put it on indoors, but had to have it with you, and tucked it under his arm.

Having done all that, he promptly reconsidered. This was no trip to court, nor was it visiting a client, he was not going to speak with her as a lawyer at all, but rather as a member of Project Overwatch. And so, he got dressed for the fourth time that day, feeling more like the clotheshorse his cousins were so disappointed that he was (usually) not, and walked down to the brig in his everyday utility uniform.

The soon-to-be-former-Lieutenant Rycroft had a cell* to herself and she sat on the cot in the corner of her cell, neither beaten, nor broken, for all that her hands showed bruises from where she’d tried to rip soft flesh from unyielding armor. Glistening sweat stood out on her arms and neck. It wasn’t from their fight, though he’d sweated plenty from that, no, while he’d been figuring things out, she’d been exercising, keeping herself in top condition. She was waiting for her moment, certain it would come. The cells were well designed and two marines had been assigned to guard the cells. One was standing outside her cell at all times, as Lieutenant Blanchard, formerly her XO, was taking no chances with an N-Series officer.

 _*The_ Mindoir _, formerly a slaver’s vessel, actually had extremely high quality cells. It had not taken much work to make them Alliance standard quality. In fact, most of what had to be done was the removal of various devices illegal to use on prisoners under Alliance law. Neither Pavlovian conditioning by electric shock, nor gravity torture was accepted Alliance practice and the less said about the…distasteful placement of “security” cameras, the better. Still, they were high quality and completely transparent, the better for potential buyers to view the “product.” A prisoner’s privacy rights were strictly limited, but still, this was pushing it, and so Hassan had given strict orders that no one without business in the brig should be there while it was occupied and to keep the cells separated from each other with privacy screens._

Hassan was pleased to see the marine was keeping his distance and had not activated the system which would let him communicate with the prisoner. He did not think she had any allies amongst the other soldiers, or crew, else she would have used them to cover for her, but at this particular moment, he didn’t trust anyone else and wouldn’t until he distributed the news about Cerberus to the universe at large. The more he’d thought about it, the more certain he was that it was the news that he planned to reveal Cerberus’s Pragia operation that had prompted the attempted murder, for all that she’d had the means to carry it out with her before hearing of it. Then again…

Hassan turned to the guard and requested a full medical check on the kids and prisoners they’d pulled off Pragia and a full technical check on their quarters/cells. The guard passed that along to Blanchard, who asked why that was needed. Hassan argued that if Rycroft had been prepared to kill him on Cerberus’s behalf, then what about the actual evidence of their wrongdoing? The marine was irritatingly contrary, but he had no desire to lose anyone under his care, or explain that to the world and his superiors.

A push of the button and he could talk with her. After circling the cell once and noticing that she didn’t react, at least visibly. “What is your rank?” He asked, trying to catch her off guard.

“Rycroft, Jennifer. Lieutenant. N-4. Serial Number—“

“That’s for when you’re a prisoner of war. Are you stating that you are at war with the Alliance?” He interrupted her, cool and precise.

She winced at that, then recovered. “No, I was just answering your question.”

“How helpful. Now, as a usual matter, this investigation would be carried out by internal security and you would have an attorney of your own. Unfortunately, the commander has not agreed that the Project needs more than one attorney,” he flashed a smile at her, as if they were just shooting the breeze. “And, obviously, regretfully, I cannot represent you. Do you wish to hold off on this discussion until an attorney can be sent to us, or you can be sent to a station with more than the one attorney?” He was sure of the answer of that. Having been willing to murder him to prevent his actions, she had to be willing to talk to him to attempt to prevent his actions. Even a tiny chance was better than no chance. And in so doing, she would reveal information, she would have to.

There was no need for her to know that he’d already sent the report in. There was no reason to tell her that there was no way to change his mind any longer and there was every reason not to. The die was cast, but he might still gain information in what was obviously going to be an ugly internal conflict with this Cerberus.

“No need for lawyers,” she snorted and rose with a fluid grace that he couldn’t help but compare to his own stiffer movements. A smirk crossed her lips, “Well, no other lawyers.”

“I’m so glad to hear that.” He let sarcasm edge his voice with acid. “When I asked about your rank, I meant your rank in Cerberus.” There was lengthy pause, so he chose to fill it, “Ms. Rycroft.” The absence of her rank was a deliberate slap in the face.

“I’m still a lieutenant in the Systems Alliance Navy!”

“Which, again, wasn’t what I asked. Or is it just that the big, bad N-4 lieutenant doesn’t want to admit to being a rifle carrier for a terrorist organization?” His mockery was aimed at provoking a response.

“Cerberus isn’t a terrorist org—“

“No. You’re right. At least terrorists announce themselves, their motives and their actions. You cower in the shadows, kidnapping children.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that! I didn’t even know they were claiming to be Cerberus until we were down there!” She stepped forward to the cell wall. “Cerberus is all about protecting humanity, they wouldn’t have done that to other humans.”

Hassan’s dark eyes narrowed. “You don’t see the contradiction there?”

“Huh?”

“If they’re all about protecting ‘humanity’ then of course they’d be willing to do that to other humans, if it served that purpose. A bit of infant sacrifice, for the greater good.”

“I’m no recruiter, or lawyer and you can twist me around with words all you like, but I know what I know and I know what Cerberus is and what they’ve done.”

“Convince me,” he said, hiding the smirk that wanted to rise there. A part of him wanted to argue further, to point out that they could either be as successful as she believed, or framed, as she believed, but probably not bothm but that wouldn’t get him the information he wanted.

She didn’t, but she tried real hard, giving him a hell of a lot of information on how Cerberus recruited and what at least some of the rank and file believed, as well as more than a few hints about what she’d done for the criminal organization and how she’d been recruited.

Then, resisting the urge to tell her that she was a dupe, or that he’d already taken the action she was trying so hard to convince him not to take, he said he would consider it and walked away. He didn’t think she had any allies still amongst the crew, but better not to trigger a violent response if he could avoid it. Hassan’s bruised throat and equally bruised ego wanted him to tell her how he’d tricked her, how he was going to see Cerberus destroyed, but that would be tactically unwise. Better to let her think she was convincing him, take full advantage of their control over her knowledge of the outside world and manipulate her to gain more information.

A fact he ended up having to explain, repeatedly and at some length, first to Lieutenant Blanchard, then to Lieutenant Aliyev, then to his own files and reports, to ensure that the ship crew, the marines and the rest of the Alliance wouldn’t think he was actually open to being convinced to join Cerberus.

Fun stuff.

* * *

## 2178 CE Knossos

Liara T’soni was depressed. The article was mostly done, and the last two rounds of external review had produced exactly opposite feedback,* so she was ready to send it off. The thing was, that though the dig was as productive as could be hoped for, it provided none of the information about Prothean society she truly wanted. Every time she worked on an article, she ended up having to review the newest literature on the topic, only to discover that everyone’s version of Prothean society was simply a reflection of their own desired utopia. Salarians almost uniformly imagined it as an advanced scientific paradise, Turians a mighty military empire, Asari an endless peaceful union, Volus a wealthy corporate state and on and on. Every time she read such things she worried that her own theories were merely shadows of her own desires and her life’s work was mere fiction.

_*Not merely in the substantive comments, but also in things as minor as word choice and which pictures to include. Nothing was quite as infuriating as being told to expand a section you’d just summarized, in response to other comments. Well, at least at this stage in the Asari maiden’s life, nothing was that annoying. Life experience would change that, but not for a while._

Instead of providing more edits, she was playing with her biotics, sending little sheets of tracing paper flying around the room, chasing one another. When she’d accidentally shredded about a dozen sheets, she gave it up for a bad job of a distraction and went with her other usual means of dealing with a bad mood.

_Dear Mother,_

_It’s been a month since my last letter. I apologize for taking so long to write, but I’ve been finishing up my paper and been handling a few minor administrative problems with the dig crew._

Liara paused for a moment, thinking about that. She didn’t want to restart the argument she’d had with Benezia about the dig staff. Her mother’s insistence that Liara be in charge of the dig as a condition of her funding it had created a great deal of strife amongst the dig’s academic sponsors. Eventually, rather than oppose the powerful matriarch, they had backed down. And then, every Asari intended to be on the team had backed out rather than follow a pureblood maiden.

Liara had been left with a group of exchange students who didn’t have any objection to following an Asari four times the age of the oldest of them, who was top in all her classes. Especially since they didn’t have any idea that pureblood was an insult, as to most of them it sounded complimentary.

It did leave them rather short on muscle, as most of the senior Asari were adepts of significant skill, while most of the transfer students were…students of no particular combat ability. Benezia had responded by calling in a favor and a company of Hierarchy engineers had been sent to set up a landing station and listening post, coincidentally keeping an eye on Liara and her fellow archaeologists. 

Liara had not particularly wanted to be in charge of the dig and responsible for the lives of two dozen fellow archaeologists.* However, Benezia had taken the view that her daughter needed to begin preparing to lead, at least as long as she completely refused to follow any of the traditional paths a maiden might follow.

_*Not even Benezia’s influence was enough to get Hierarchy soldiers assigned to the command of an Asari maiden, or, really, anyone who wasn’t a higher level Hierarchy officer._

And what Benezia wanted, Benezia got.* Still, there was no point having the same fight in slow motion over a dozen letters, so rather than complain about the fact of her authority, she complained about the substance of those she had authority over, which would resonate with Benezia as the matriarch rode herd on a massive network of voters and affiliated commercial activity.

_*This was Liara’s theory, at least. Though an unbiased observer might point out that Benezia had very definitely not wanted her daughter to be a, as she put it when very furious, frigid academic._

_Farn Po has continued to send files to her clan, apparently she believes that there is some economic value to the information. Or she’s just trying to convince her clan that there’s economic value here. I appreciated it that you had the Turians intercept her communications so I can review them. There’s no sign that she’s found anything without reporting it, but you were correct, the precaution was wise._

The Volus was a good archaeologist, for all that she worked through half a dozen drones, rather than using her own, clumsy, suited hands. This had earned her a great deal of trouble at University because most of the professors had taken the view that hands, with their useful nerves, were key to properly handling a dig. Liara was rather more encouraging, because the Volus worked at twice the speed of anyone else and recovered as many artifacts as you would expect. Honestly, most of the archaeology professors could be incredibly archaic, viewing even the technology of their youth a millennium ago as far too advanced to have any place on a dig site.

_Proctis Dection has continued to be distracted. The quality and quantity of his work has continued its decline. His attempts to cover up the failure by constantly hanging around me in order to increase his visibility are painfully obvious. Especially given the presence of so many other Turians, but he just hangs around me._

_He obviously realizes how close he is to being sent back to the university, as he can barely manage to string together a sentence when we speak. He can’t even look me in the eye while we talk. It’s getting ridiculous. And every time I say that we have to talk, his subharmonics make my inner ear ache and he runs off. Honestly, some people just aren’t up for fieldwork. There’s nothing wrong with it, but you’d think a Turian would understand not doing things you aren’t suited for._

Liara would not figure out that Proctis was actually a perfectly competent field archaeologist when he wasn’t distracted by the woman who he was absurdly obsessed with, until she fell in love herself. Which, despite her age, was still quite a while in the future.

_Our supply problems resolved themselves, however, so all is basically under control._

_I love you mother,_

_Liara T’soni_

Liara would never learn that her mother had had a word with an Eclipse commander and that was why the raids on her supply shipments had stopped.

The archaeologist glanced at the message, then sent it off before she could talk herself into revising it further.

* * *

## 2178 CE Citadel, Qrund’s Table

Urdnot Wrex dug into the food that had been dumped in front of him. What the Table lacked in ambiance it made up for in ambivalence towards its customers’ business. And the food was just like that he’d gotten at home. Barely edible, even for a Krogan and almost, but not quite, free.

There was not, in fact anyone from Clan Qrund running Qrund’s Table and hadn’t been since Wrex had had a disagreement with the original owner about a century back. The Krogan had completely failed to take the hint when Wrex had referred to himself as a battlemaster and instead chose to try to lean on Wrex, claiming he still had to pay for his meal and the half dozen shots of ryncol he’d ingested before he could leave. Everyone knew that you paid as you went at the Table, but the big Krogan had thought Wrex was drunk enough, or dumb enough, or weak enough to pay twice. He was not.

The smarter patrons had scattered when Qrond had grabbed Wrex’s shoulder. The dumber patrons had fled when Wrex shook it off and shoved the other Krogan away. The deaf patron didn’t notice until they actually crashed through his table and sent his food sliding across the room. He took himself out rather quickly after that.

They’d ripped the place apart as they fought. Wrex was too drunk to get his biotics working and the Citadel had been on high security after a then-recent incident between Volus Separatists and a pair of Spectres had resulted in three docking bays and half a district being blown to hell and a weapons ban on the Citadel. That left them with hands and kitchen utensils. It was damn hard to kill a Krogan without serious weaponry. Even without weapons and about fifteen sheets to the wind, Wrex was winning the fight, having taken away several knives and planted them in the other Krogan’s body, trying to aim for organs, though given the double-vision he wasn’t always successful.

They’d still been scrapping with each other when C-Sec had turned up and Qrond had been so lost in blood rage that he tried to continue the fight, despite the presence of half a dozen armored C-Sec officers, armed to the gills and sent to deal with crazy Krogan.

They’d shredded the poor dumb bastard and kicked Wrex off the Citadel before he even sobered up. He’d woken up on a ship heading to Tuchanka and had to jump ship, ‘borrowing’ a shuttle, in order to avoid going back there. Ever after, when he’d been on the Citadel, he ate at least one meal at Qrond’s table.* Partly because it continued to be the only source of Krogan cuisine on the Citadel, partly because he owned it these days and partly as a reminder that Citadel assholes would blow away any Krogan, any time, given the slightest of provocations.

_*At least when an employer, or Wrex himself, had arranged for him to be permitted to be on the Citadel, as those times when he was “unofficially” on the Citadel, he did not go anywhere where Urdnot Wrex would be expected, or might be recognized._

Wrex had taken a seat in the corner, placing himself under the screen playing the Citadel news, and giving him a clear view of both entrances, as well as placing him near enough the back way out. Above him, the Asari newscaster was talking, at a volume he could barely hear above the sound of his own chewing.

“Systems Alliance Elections will begin in thirty hours and the last of the Citadel News proprietary polls are in! The big story is the collapse of support for Terra Firma. Never a major player in Human politics, it was, however, the largest of the minor parties. It’s believed that this is a result of the recent revelations about Cerberus. Despite the plea issued by Terra Firma’s press office that they should not be “tarred with the same baby-stealing brush as those terrorists,” voters are not seeing a significant difference between the two organizations. Breaking the results down by colony—“

Wrex grunted and got up, whacking the screen hard enough to force it to jump channels.

“This is Geeya Mydo for Thessia News Service, I’m standing on the farming colony of Trilvun, deep in the Terminus Systems. I and my camera crew have been embedded with a unit of mercenaries out of Eclipse for the past three months. Two days ago, they accepted a contract to defend the colonists as they were evacuating in the face of assaults by an organized band of Terminus pirates known as the Silent Sun. Yesterday the pirates launched an assault,” video sprang to life behind the pretty Asari reporter, showing disorganized pirates assailing fixed defenses manned by drones and mechs, while commando teams of Asari and Salarians hit the attackers from the sides and behind. Wrex paused, slightly impressed by the skill the other mercenaries showed. “Though the Eclipse mercenaries easily outmaneuvered the pirate ground forces, the real victory was secured,” the video snapped to space, a pair of small warships flanking a larger transport, facing down the small Eclipse transport/warship, “in space, with the intervention of a task force from Project Overwatch.” Half a dozen motley ships appeared in the far distance and began decelerating, firing as they came, clearly the video had been edited to appear clearer to an audience unfamiliar with the realities of space combat, but the pirate ships coming apart under a salvo of fire was difficult to misinterpret, “destroyed the pirate assault force. The Project has gained a massive increase in funding and responsibility following their revelation of Cerberus activity in the Terminus systems and has gained allies and bases throughout the Terminus Systems through actions such as this. For the next six weeks, I’ll be embedded with the Project’s Task Force Sectoid as they continue to—“

Wrex whacked the screen again and a Salarian replaced the Asari. “Meridian Medical’s stock has continued its collapse. The company, long dominating the Citadel emergency medical equipment market, has been losing market share ever since the introduction of medi-gel. Its most recent attempt to get the substance banned has just been dismissed, leaving the company in desperate straits, despite its high level ties to the Asari and Salarian governments. Emergent Emergency Technologies, Meridian’s main competitor issued a statement that what mattered was saving lives not—“

Another whack brought a human male into focus, brilliant smile dimming as he transitioned topics, “Lieutenant Rycroft will not attend her court martial today, as she was found, dead in her cell. It’s unclear whether the suspected Cerberus agent committed suicide, or was poisoned by her alleged colleagues. Either way, her death while in the custody of the Systems Alliance is another indication that the criminal organization has infiltrated the very—“

Wrex casually ripped the screen out of the wall and sat down. “Humans,” he muttered, “suddenly they’re everywhere. Hairless pyjaks.”

“I’d have thought you were in favor of anything that destabilized the current situation, battlemaster,” a female voice said from behind him.

Wrex did not jump, nor spin, despite the fact that he hadn’t heard the woman approach, nor had any of his electronic detectors warned him of her presence. Still, he turned slow and smooth, “Vasir. What’s the job and what’s the pay?”

The Asari vanguard smirked up at Wrex. “All business these days, eh?”

Wrex gave her a toothy* smile. “When a Spectre of the Council accuses me of wanting to destabilize galactic society, I choose not to answer, because they wouldn’t let me back on the Citadel for a century after the last time I crushed a Spectre’s skull,” he leaned over her, “and the Citadel’s got the best shopping around and a merc needs bleeding edge gear, unless he wants to be the one bleeding.”

_*When a Krogan shows its teeth, it is likely an aggressive, not a friendly gesture, though given that aggression and friendship are less opposed in Krogan society than in most other civilized societies, it can be both._

Tela didn’t flinch, or retreat from the looming Krogan. Regardless of the fact that Wrex was pretty sure he could take any Spectre he’d ever met, he had to admit, he’d never seen one flinch, or cower. “You sure you want this to just be business?” Tela teased. “We’ve certainly had some fun in the past.”

“Indeed, I don’t think I’d ever blown up an insurance company’s headquarters before. The irony of that amused me. And I was absolutely hysterical when I discovered our attack have been categorized as an act of the Goddess, leaving them no recompense.” Tela’s lips tightened slightly. “Oh, were you talking about something else?” He asked innocently.

“I guess not. The job’s simple. Someone has been stealing money from the Citadel Scientific Grant Foundation. We traced the funds to Centurion Bank. They won’t answer any questions and are hiding behind Ilium’s bank secrecy regulations. Now, usually I’d just go in and take the records, but Centurion does money laundering for those Asari who like to dabble in the Terminus trade and if I go in like a Spectre my **shockwave** will trigger more than one biotic explosion.”*

_*An Asari expression roughly equivalent to kicking over an anthill, or opening up many cans of worms._

Wrex’s grin turned more genuine. “But if there was just, say, a bank robbery, well, that’s the risk of being on Ilium?”

“Exactly,” Tela purred, hand coming to rest on his arm. She was teasing, mostly, for all that if he’d ever said yes, she would not have backed away.

“I’ll need the details.”

“You’ll have them.”

“And a million credits.”

Tela’s laughter was the peal of a golden bell. “This job should pay for itself.”

“In that case, what do I need you for?” Wrex countered, unmoved by her, obviously false, amusement.

“To get away afterwards.”

Wrex’s laughter was the growling of an alpha varren. “Do be serious.”

“Fine. How’s this? I’ll buy whatever you steal at face value, no discount for the fact that they’ll be as hot as an O-class star,* sound like a deal?”

 _*The hottest type of star, exceeding 30,000 degrees Kelvin._

“Add in expenses, mine and the pay and expenses of a team of three other mercs, and we have a deal.”

“Done,” she shook his hand politely. His grip tightened, testing her with his strength, as he always did. She grinned as she matched his iron grip with a **barrier** protected one.

Wrex gave an actual smile and released her. “We’ve bartered, now we feast!” he sat down and pounded on the table for more food.

Unappetizing slop was dropped in front of him and the seat that Tela could take. She winced and sat heavily opposite him. During their first meeting, she’d tried to weasel out of ‘sealing the deal with a meal,’ as he’d insisted on putting it, only to be met with what she’d mentally dubbed the Krogan death stare. After that, she’d just made sure she swallowed a handful of anti-nausea meds before meeting with him and toughed it out. But this time would be different.

Wrex lifted the large plate and let the entire mass slide down his throat without having to taste it, much, or feel its slimy texture, mostly. Then the Krogan swallowed the glass of ryncol, burning away the flavor and the texture alike. He smirked at her and waited.

Tela slid a spoon into the muck and lifted it, then paused and smirked right back at him and put the spoon down. “No thanks, but, this, I’ll take” she said, grabbing the second shot of ryncol the waitress had delivered and swallowed it down in one gulp, enjoying the burn and the buzz without the unpleasantness which usually would have come from an Asari drinking ryncol, thanks to the meds she’d taken before coming to this meeting. She coughed once, despite herself and concluded with a whispered, choking, “this, thanks.”

Wrex stared at her, actually shocked. “I thought—“ he began, far more weakly than he usually did.

“Really? Because I thought you made everyone eat that slop in order to deal with you, but then I run into Liopa Bin and she flat out laughs when I’m complaining about you. Apparently she’s hired you at least three times, never having to choke down barely edible food!”

After a moment’s pause, Wrex decided laughter was the best available response to the furious Spectre. He could have tried to explain why, specifically his extreme distaste for the majority of Spectres, being Turian or Salarian, making it too risky to indulge his sense of humor, lest it end not with nausea, but with explosions. Given that any real explanation was likely to provoke the vanguard in front of him into a **charge** , which would certainly destroy his restaurant, though probably not him, it just wasn’t worth it. Instead he just laughed until her stern expression began to fade and a few coughs of laughter escaped her rigid control. When he actually fell out of his chair, she began to laugh more seriously.

Wrex managed to pull himself back, most of the way, upright, with two hands and main force, but even braced on the table, his shoulders were shaking slightly. A slight roll and summoning ugly memories and he managed to stop laughing. Mostly. With a smile on his face, he said, “All right, now, let’s plan a bank robbery. Should be fun!”

* * *

## 2178 CE Eden Prime

“Williams! Front and center!” Lieutenant Marlene Chigiyal was a former drill sergeant and had the voice to prove it. In fact, the soldiers under her command had a whole series of jokes dedicated to the woman’s alleged inability to speak in a normal speaking voice.

Corporal Ashley Williams moved as fast she could through the underbrush towards the lieutenant’s location. Eden Prime’s thick backcountry forest was a mix of native vegetation and invasive species humanity had accidentally unleashed, resulting in barriers that were impassible to anyone without an M29 Grizzly. Though the lighter M35 Mako’s had been temporarily deployed on Eden Prime, after one had had to be airlifted out due to getting stuck, the APCs had been transferred to other fronts, leaving the 2nd Frontier Division with the older, heavier, Grizzlies. That suited Ashley just fine. Certainly better than a pain in the ass lieutenant with a stick up her ass about Ashley’s last name.

“Get lost, corporal?” the lieutenant asked acidly as Ashley broke through the overgrowth, sheathing the combat blade she’d blunted on vegetation.

A sharp salute and a “No, sir,” were her only response, despite a desire to test her combat blade’s remaining edge on the shorter woman’s face.

“Of course not,” Ashley didn’t lower her gaze from the point she was staring at approximately ten inches above the woman’s head and so could not see, though she could hear the sneer in the other woman’s voice. The old Williams curse. But Chigiyal wouldn’t have called her over just to snipe at her, not in the middle of a search and rescue. “And that’s good, because you’re going to need quite a bit of navigation skill to join 2nd squad’s search of the swamps.”

“Yes, sir,” Ashley said, grateful for the fact that unlike her officer, she was wearing her helmet and so her expression could not be seen.

In either mercy, or sadism, Chigiyal briefly explained that 2nd squad had managed to drive their Grizzly into their own sergeant in an attempt to pull the mired man out of the swamp in which he had become stuck. The sergeant was mostly fine, thanks to his body armor, but his leg had been really stuck and he’d fractured his hip, requiring his squad to pull him out of his armor and medivac him. Ashley was to take his place in searching the horribly unpleasant grid least likely to hold the missing teenagers they were searching for.*

_*Chigiyal had not assigned Ashley’s squad to that mission originally because despite her clear attempts to drive Ashley out of the marines, she knew that Ash’s 3 rd squad,, mostly consisting of recruits fresh out of basic, were really not up to conducting a search and rescue mission in that terrain. Indeed, 2nd squad’s more experienced troops hadn’t been up to it. Swamp search-and-rescue not being something that they generally had much call for. _

Ashley did not move. Chigiyal had previously reamed her out for leaving without being dismissed, even in circumstances where the dismissal should have gone without saying. Of course there was no winning with an officer in a bad mood, let alone one who was deliberately out to get you, so the lieutenant’s response to this courtesy was to demand to know why Ashley was still there.

A ground-eating jog took her towards where her HUD told her third squad was clustered. A snapped order over the comm system had them spreading out back along the search grid again, each scanning for heat or motion at the widest range their suits could manage, as the 212th was short on drones and VI support and it had all been assigned to the more likely zones and areas where the simpler programming of the search and rescue programs could function, unlike the densely wooded marshland that blocked scanners and ordered deployment.

A quick set of orders and her armor synched with her new squad’s, bringing up suit and medical information for her half-dozen* charges. Some were showing higher BP than she would have expected from so minor an engagement. But that was probably just concern over seeing one of their own injured, due to massive stupidity. Few of the New Eden garrison had ever seen anyone injured, even so minor an injury as a leg broken so thoroughly that bone was sticking out of the flesh. Or, as the privates had said on a comm channel they believed unsupervised, “the sarge’s leg looked like a fucking drumstick, with the bone sticking out!”

_*A full combat squad consisted of a sergeant, two corporals and seven privates, but 3 rd squad’s senior corporal had been promoted to sergeant over in the 211th, while the injured sergeant was being escorted back to the base by the junior corporal, grateful that the lieutenant was giving him an escape from the swamp and a private to drive the Grizzly. _

The next three hours were horrible. Fortunately her helmet’s seals held up, unlike poor Private Otto, who she was forced to send back after his filters failed and he began to vomit uncontrollably from the sheer stink of the Eden Prime swamps. Another of the soldiers had to almost carry him out, leaving her even more shorthanded. The swamps were infested with gasbags, their low hanging tentacles scrapping through the stagnant water, scooping up insects and fish. Unfortunately the damn things kept tripping both her movement and heat sensors. The complaints of the others filled her comm channel along with jokes about the native animals and increasingly creative, then increasingly furious and finally dully annoyed threats regarding improper use of Alliance military equipment and orifices which the animals in question did not, in fact, possess.

Finally something out of place slid through the comm traffic, catching Ashley’s ear. It was chatter about a heat signature, too high to be background heat and too low to be an animal. Private Jinga was going to ignore it, until a command and a minor burst of profanity sent the private scurrying* over to check it out. It was a swarm of Lankers, warm-blooded predators living under-water. A large group of them had heated the water noticeably. The next two they checked out were also mere oddities. The fourth, however was the rapidly cooling tail-fin of the crashed aircar the idiots they were looking for had taken for a joyride, after disabling the tracking system so their parents couldn’t find them. Whether it had retained heat from the crash which had ripped its way through some of the canopy, or was simply absorbing the heat of sunlight slanting through the canopy and bouncing off the metal was unclear and irrelevant, though either way Ashley was inclined to view it as providence.

_*Scurrying is not an accurate description of the movement the marine made through the swamp, but there’s no word for faster-than-is-safe, incredibly-awkward, desperately-trying-to-keep-from-getting-stuck motion._

Ashley called it in and began looking for a way to get the vehicle out. There were no tracks around other than their own. The teenagers hadn’t made it out of the vehicle. Neither space-rated nor military-grade, it wouldn’t have much in the way of survival gear. They’d been gone for hours, they might well have suffocated before she arrived, but she’d be damned if they died under her feet while she stood there and did nothing.

An armor piercing round created a handy anchor point in the tail fin, through which to thread a piece of the high-tensile rope they were carrying, They didn’t have the Grizzly, which usually would have been used to pull it out, but a quick call had the air team rerouted to their location, with Chigiyal’s blessing, even if she did keep the other teams searching on the theory that Ashley could have found any old lost vehicle.

While the heavy duty lifter* was rerouting, she had her squad gather and try to pull it out. They got it about three inches out of the gripping sucking mud before the lifter arrived. There was no nearby clearing large enough for the lifter to land,** or get close enough to pass the rope up. Private Jinga offered to lose the armor and climb up, but given the nausea which had crippled Private Otto, that wasn’t a good idea, so instead she tied the other end of the rope to a pry bar and hurled it up. The first throw proved not even the strongest of their people could throw it high enough, so a sharp order and the pilot used the Eezo core to increase the density of the ship and force its way down through the thick branches, until it scrapped a trunk, then pulled back into the space its dense bulk had cleared.

_*Eden Prime didn’t have a network of roads, yet, so transport was by Eezo cored vehicles. Personal vehicles would be full aircars, while heavier cargo transports would consist of a single heavy carrier which would pull a number of large trailers with tiny Eezo cores just barely capable of decreasing the weight of the cargo pod enough to let powerful air-cushion engines keep them off the ground. Barely._

_**The crashing aircar had been far smaller than the heavy lifter and though it had ripped its way through part of the canopy as emergency systems had increased density and survivability, the vehicle had clearly hit a large tree and bounced, then impacted the swamp, crashing and sinking quickly as its artificially increased density forced it deep into the water._

It took three throws, before the engineer hanging out the open door caught it and climbed back to wind it through the winch on the back of the heavy cargo aircar. Then it was just a matter of using engines intended to pull a dozen trailers in ground effect mode to rip the car out of the muck. The rope held no problem, but it was beginning to cut through the mostly decorative fin that Ashley had put a hole in.

The vehicle slid out with a disgusting slurping sound and snapped into the air, driving the heavy lifter forward before the driver got control of the lifter. The aircar was so covered in muck that Ash couldn’t be entirely sure it was the right one, it would be bad if this was just some old crash. It swung on the end of the rope like a giant pendulum, almost crashing into Private Jinga, but Ashley tackled the stunned and staring private out of the way and snapped an order sending the rest of the squad to scatter, as the car scattered mud everywhere. The driver released the winch, letting the vehicle down as easily as he could manage.

Ash was on her feet by the time the vehicle was set down, combat knife in one hand, she rushed forward and smashed her way through the back window. Though aircars weren’t designed to be airtight, the thick coating of much and mud had probably rendered it airtight, leaving the idiots to suffocate, unless she moved fast.

The heavy blade was steel, not the silicon-carbide of the most modern round of combat knives, but when driven by gene-modded strength and the full weight of her body and body armor alike, and it could (and did) shatter the back window, the one least likely to harm the occupants if broken.

When she didn’t hear coughing, or vomiting, she knew the occupants were dead. It would take time to get the doors open, so she forced her way in by dint of ignoring the sound of safety glass scratching on body armor and pushing very hard. It was a tight fit, but she managed to get an armored hand on the bare necks she could see in the front seats and tried to trigger medi-gel. Her suit wouldn’t release the valuable compound as they were both dead, as she’d known they would be.

The trip out of the swamp was easier, with the vehicle properly stowed they were able to hitch a ride with the heavy lifter’s crew, for all that they wrinkled their noses at the soldiers’ stink, they didn’t leave them in the swamp, for which the part of Ash which was responsible for the rest of her squad was grateful. The rest of her was just thoroughly depressed by the fact that they were carrying back bodies instead of the rescued teenagers she’d hoped to find.

Lieutenant Chigiyal met the dispirited group of soldiers at landing zone, nose wrinkling at the stench and poked her head in the car, holding her nose and breath. The corpses were relatively fresh, at least when compared with the overwhelming odor of the swamp. The Lieutenant turned back to Ashley, who stood sharply at attention and called her squad to order as well. A snapped order from the officer had helmets off and they stayed in their ranks, despite the stink twisting stomachs and faces alike, at least until the officer made it clear what she thought of soldiers who made faces at her.

Chigiyal stalked back and forth in front of them, mad as a cat doused in water. The reaming started with their appearance then advanced to the laxness an exhausting day of trekking through the swamp had inflicted on their usually precise stance. Finally, she reached Ashley and began lodging her less insane complaints. Ash had not gotten them moving fast enough, had tolerated too many breaks, had lost two more of her squad, slowing the search, on and on, the implication being that but for her actions the teens might have been rescued alive.

The corporal’s face slowly grew paler as she stood at attention and was screamed at by a lieutenant with the instincts of a sergeant. For the ten minutes it went on, she said nothing except ‘No excuse, sir,’ over and over again, though she never accepted responsibility for the failure, as that would have given the lieutenant a half-way reasonable excuse to run her out of the service. Fortunately, the screeching at the others had given the rest of the platoon enough time to gather the vehicle and corpses and clear out, leaving Ash to be ‘disciplined’ in relative privacy.

Finally Chigiyal turned from her and back to her soldiers and continued her rant. “But I can’t blame Miss* Williams for the original disaster that lost you idiots your Grizzly and three of your number. That was the fault of idiots screwing around when they were supposed to be engaged in a search and rescue mission. I hope you all had a good look at those bodies so you can see what your rough-housing called. But since I rather doubt any of you had the stomach to look at the consequences of your actions, you can all march back to the base. Do hurry, the bodies won’t be released to the families until you get there, look, remember and apologize to them for your failure and the dishonor you have brought upon the the 212th. Now get out of my sight.”

_*The absence of her rank was a deliberate insult, one which did make Ash twitch, but fortunately the lieutenant was not looking at her._

Ash led them out at an easy loping pace, enjoying the muttering that, for once, was not directed at her, or about her, or about her ancestor. At least this time the horrible treatment striking everyone in her squad had not been her fault. Probably. The patent unfairness of the officer’s behavior drove the soldiers onto her side. It almost felt like a new beginning.

It felt even more like a new beginning when they arrived back at the base and were informed that the lieutenant had been quietly chewed out and reassigned by Major Duale, upon witnessing her absurd overreaction to discovering that despite her orders the bodies had been released to the families. The major didn’t much care for Ash, but after reviewing the complete incident, he did recommend her promotion to sergeant.

* * *

## 2179 CE Omega

“I still don’t know how you got Aria T’Loak to agree to host this meeting and guarantee the safety of participants,” Shepard asked.

Hassan gave her a smile that his scars twitched into a smirk, “All you have to do is ask.”

Shepard shuddered. “Given her reputation, I don’t think I want to know.”

“Who could say no to this pretty face?” Hassan joked, gesturing at his scarred mug.

“Not me, which is why I agreed to this meeting. I still think this is stupid. Half the attendees are too weak to do anything and the other half are criminals.”

“But not slavers. Slavers are, in fact, their competition. We use that to gain a foothold and try to start up some legitimate trade. If we can make it profitable then people will do that rather than be criminals, since,” he flicked a glance at Jack, trailing Samara through the corridors, bursting with enthusiasm, eyes taking in every new thing with an eagerness undiminished by three years of travel, “ _most_ people don’t enjoy getting shot at.”

“We’ll see, just don’t give away our refueling rights and I’ll be happy.”

“Come on, commander, you’ve got to give the speech opening this wonderful convention.”

“I don’t think I can top the one Aria gave.”

“Well, obviously you’ll just have to refer to yourself as the _empress_ of Omega,” Hassan snarked at her.

“Only if we’re feeling melodramatic,” Shepard countered.

“Aren’t we always?”

Shepard glanced back at Jack who was juggling a handful of odd looking fruit she’d bought from a street vendor, using her biotics to make up for the bobbles in her physical dexterity.* Samara’s smile was less serene and more amused than she’d seen in the first year of their acquaintance. “Not always.”

_*The Justicars trained in both biotic and physical combat and with Jack under Samara’s wing, she was learning many things Cerberus had not bothered to train their ultimate weapon to do. This, in fact, raised questions about what exactly the point of the project was, as a weapon needed to be sane and controllable and Jack was neither._

“Good. Now channel that heartwarming sap into your welcoming speech!”

“We still have time.”

“Which could be used to prepare.”

“Nah, better if I just wing it,” Shepard countered with a grin.

There was no arguing with that, despite how much he wanted to. The one time he’d convinced her to write out a script and use it as an actual guide had ended with them getting shot at by pirates. That wouldn’t have been too unusual if not for the fact that the people she’d been talking to hadn’t been pirates at the start of her speech.

Shepard glanced over at where Jack was watching an Asari ink an elegant tattoo on a Batarian forearm, turning their caste mark* into an elaborate and beautiful image of a broken pillar. Jack was asking what it was and Samara was explaining Batarian beliefs regarding the various pillars that hold up society and that the one being tattooed on the man’s arm was the Pillar of Respect, which, in Batarian meant basically knowing your place.

_*Caste marks, as the name suggests are markings tattooed on the forearm, indicating the Batarian’s caste status. The more elaborate the tattoo, the higher the caste, as historically movement between castes was feasible, at least, upward movement was feasible, as downward motion resulted in enslavement. Slaves have no status and no rank and, historically, no arm if they’d been enslaved after having risen to possess a caste mark, as tattoo removal was not feasible. This historic mobility has stagnated and caste advancement is only possible under extraordinary circumstances, while enslavement is reserved for extreme cases, born slaves and those outsiders captured in raids._

Shepard remembered Jack walking in on her in the communal shower, asking about the tattoo on her back. Explaining that she’d had an image of Mindoir tattooed on her back, so she could carry it with her wherever she went and it couldn’t be taken from her the way so many of her fellows had been taken from it, only to discover the girl had been asking what a tattoo was. There were the oddest gaps in her knowledge and it was always awkward to stumble over one of them.

“Doesn’t she need permission from someone to get a tattoo?” Shepard asked, watching Jack hand over her allowance to the Asari. Someone needed to teach her to negotiate, but it certainly wasn’t going to be Samara, and Shepard’s own idea of negotiation tended to be a sinuous stretch that showed off her N6 designation and her weapons, maybe with a little flare of biotic energy as well, so she wasn’t really up for it.

Hassan shook his head. “Not on Omega.”

“And elsewhere?” It was an old argument about looking for Jack’s family, or doing anything to get her away from Project Overwatch and the explosions they attracted with alarming frequency. This time Hassan had a different answer for her.

“I asked. She doesn’t know and wouldn’t volunteer a DNA sample to run the check.”

“I’m sure she’s scared of finding out if her family’s alive, but that’s hardly—“

“That’s not what she’s scared about,” Hassan interjected.

“What?”

“There’ve been six different attempts to steal her DNA, or medical records. A lot of people are interested in seeing if Cerberus’s project produced any results. Fortunately, it really does look like the project was mostly incommunicado, so the rest of Cerberus doesn’t know who Jack really is any more than we do. But if we go looking—“

“Cerberus might get there first,” Shepard said, understanding.

“Or Aldrin Labs, or Sirta Foundation. Figuring out how to enhance biotic abilities in Humans would be a trillion credit industry.”

“You’ve got a fun mind.”

“I wish.”

“Huh?”

“That came from Jack. Or at least the Cerberus part did.”

Shepard’s eyes flicked back to Jack, the girl grinning as she took a seat in front of the Asari tattoo artist and begged Samara to do something. A second later and the Asari Matriarch ran her hand over Jack’s head, biotics flaring and melting her short black hair without even touching her head. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Remind me again why we need to keep bringing those assholes in alive?”

“Because—“

“Sooner or later one of them will talk. You’ve been saying that for a year and a half. I’m starting to think that what we need is not more of them talking, but more of us shooting them.”

Hassan shrugged. “Can’t kill ‘em if you can’t find ‘em. Just like they can’t threaten her family* if they can’t find them.”

 _*This was, in fact, most of the reason he hadn’t gone looking. The rest was because, if he didn’t_ know _she had family, then he wasn’t legally obligated to reach out to them and they didn’t have any rights over her. Jack’s reaction to being away from Samara had made it clear that any relationship which interfered with that would have negative consequences for the pint-sized biotic. And anyone around her._

“They also can’t threaten her family if we turn them into chunky paste.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Speak for yourself,” Shepard countered, flexing a hand that flared with biotic power. She glanced back at Jack who was wincing slightly and holding Samara’s hand as the artist began pressing the ink into her scalp.

“I’m surprised Samara’s okay with Jack getting tattooed. Isn’t she still freaked out about how young she is?”

“I think she’s mostly over that and accepts that Humans age faster than Asari, so long as we don’t mention our ages to her, she’s good. Besides, she recognizes that for a lot of trauma survivors tattoos are a way of reclaiming control over their body.”

Shepard could feel the weight of a world pressing between her shoulder-blades and gave Hassan a glare. “You know, for a guy who makes his living with words, sometimes you say the dumbest shit.”

Hassan had no response to that.

* * *

## 2180 CE Porton, Sinora

“And in stunning news out of the Terminus Systems, more than forty different minor governments, mercenary bands, shipping guilds and other groups have signed an agreement granting Project Overwatch numerous rights and privileges, as well as responsibilities for mediating amongst the groups. Though they represent only a tiny fraction of the powers of the Terminus and none of the major players except Aria T’Loak signed on, this is still a shocking development in the notoriously uncoordinated sector. It came only after Commander Shepard, Project Overwatch’s commander, single handedly obliterated a combined Blue Suns and Eclipse force attempting to blow up the meeting. There’s already talk that the Commander will be—“

Captain Harald Braun turned off the weeks-old news report, which had finally made it to their current location, deep in the Terminus systems, with a grunt. His second on this mission, Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko frowned at him. “Honestly, sir, I don’t get what your problem is with her.”

“She’s a showboat. The real work gets done in the shadows, by people whose names are never known and want it that way.”

“Then what’s the problem? She can be a big shiny distraction for the rest of the galaxy, while we get the job done of sorting out these Cerberus assholes,” Kaiden offered, responding to his words, not the dismissive tone his superior adopted when speaking of anyone who wasn’t Alliance Intelligence.

The other officer grunted and got up, leaving without another word. Kaiden was never sure if he did that because he couldn’t think of a response, or he just didn’t care enough to bother trying to convince the younger man of anything. On the other hand, since Kaiden had been sent on this mission, as he was informed, because he was a biotic, so he ought to be able to deal with those crazy blue biotics on Sinora, he couldn’t entirely criticize the other officer for not respecting him.

And it was even true. The Asari did treat him better than Braun, or the others on his team, though whether that was because he was a biotic, or because he lacked the Intelligence officers ingrained blandness and paranoia (and, he thought to himself, just a little ashamed of it, he was better looking than they, as Intelligence preferred the unmemorable) it would be difficult to say.

A wave of his hand activated his omni-tool and a few quick commands brought up a map of the Terminus Systems, a network of lines marking the Mass Relays and another highlighted the areas Shepard now had support in. They clustered around the relays connecting directly to Hegemony space, which wasn’t really a surprise. They were the ones most in need. Another tapped command brought up the major players in the Terminus Systems. The Coven filled four clusters and a dozen worlds, including Sinora.

Those systems were shaded an identical red, proclaiming it a single power, but that was simply false. For all the Coven would pull together against an outside invader, the Coven eschewed the e-democracy of the Asari Republics, for a gerontocracy.* And if getting a society to agree was hard, getting ten thousand matriarchs to agree on anything besides ‘kill the invader’ was unlikely.

_*Gerontocracy: Rule by elders. In point of fact, even amongst the Asari Republics, it was inevitably the Matriarchs who shaped all the options which were voted on. However, in the Republics, unlike amongst the Coven, flaying a Matron or Maiden with your mind was not an acceptable way to respond to an argument._

Most of the major powers of the Terminus were far away from the borders, as for some reason* any Terminus power attempting to form near the border of Citadel space inevitably imploded. They were, therefore, well away from Shepard’s operation, so their lack of involvement shouldn’t be too crippling.

_*Spectres. The reason was Spectres._

After six months on this rock, Kaiden was starting to wish he was nearer the action. Theoretically they were there to keep a covert eye on the Cerberus compound they’d located on the planet. However, since they were basically the only Humans (except for Cerberus) this deep in the Terminus, keeping that eye covert was basically a pipe dream. Originally disdainful of Shepard’s tendency to recruit from amongst the natives, even Braun was beginning to consider its benefits.

As Kaiden idly considered whether he had the energy to get up and go down to the little Thessian restaurant on the corner, or if he should order delivery, a sudden explosion of alarms, followed quickly by an actual explosion sent a burst of energy through him and slammed him to his feet. In moments he was at the observation station, manned by a tech who was flicking through a dozen different recordings.

“What the—report,” he cut off the profanity laden question he had intended and replaced it with military efficiency.

“Four shuttles on descent to the main port just veered off, fast. One upped its mass all the way and dropped on the Cerberus barracks. That was the explosion. The other three are landing. A quick wave brought up an orbital view of the compound from one of the borrowed Coven surveillance satellites.

The compound was Asari built and Cerberus modified, so it was all curving architecture. However, the Terminus had effected it enough that there was a quite sturdy wall with reasonable gun emplacements and the compound’s four interconnected buildings were set far enough back that most car bombs detonated outside the wall wouldn’t scratch the inner compound. That was little help against an airborne assault. For that they relied upon the AA guns placed on the top of the barracks.

Unfortunately for the Cerberus personnel, those had been intended to take out stealthy infiltration drones, gunships, or other assault craft, not a fully loaded cargo shuttle dropping down from low orbit, with its mass run up as high as the eezo core would allow. Only the sturdiness of the Asari architecture and the fact that it collapsed inwards, instead of exploding outwards prevented the entire compound from going up.

“Hit the barracks from orbit,” Kaiden glanced at the time in the corner of the tech’s monitor, “right during shift change while they were debriefing in the barracks.” He whistled.

The tech nodded. “Someone knows what they’re doing and what’s going on in that compound. I estimate three quarters of the guard contingent was wiped out.”

Braun stormed in and took in the situation in an instant. The Intelligence officer swore loudly and in three languages, one of which Kaiden’s translator was unable to process and the other two of which the auto-censor left him with nothing but a series of hanging suffixes. Kaiden, who knew from long experience that he could curse creatively, or do his job, but not both, focused on the other shuttles. They’d been further along their descent before breaking off, but were still almost two minutes out, as diverting from their flight path before the cargo shuttle arrived, would have set off every alarm in the place.

As it was, it should have drawn AA fire from the port, as Sinora did not like visitors making trouble. The fact that it hadn’t meant that this was either a local operation, or someone’s palm had been greased. Braun was already snapping orders, sending the team which was at the port trying to get trackers and bugs into the latest shipment of gear* for the compound scurrying away to find out what was going on. A second command sent Kaiden off to mobilize the half dozen other Alliance personnel on base.

_*The Cerberus compound’s security was top notch, leaving the Alliance with passive observation as their best bet for gathering information. As their first attempt at covert infiltration (and all subsequent attempts) had been detected and casually neutralized, it was clear that the terrorists knew they were under observation. They trusted in the unwillingness of their observers to bring down the wrath of Coven matriarchs upon them and their allies to keep them safe. This hadn’t proven a bad bet, until now._

If the compound was going down, then they would have to get their intel more directly. Of course they had plans in place for a breach, but those did not include shuttles full of unknowns dropping into the compound. The squad scrambled into their armor as fast as possible and snatched up weapons which hadn’t been used for anything more rigorous than training. Within five minutes they were moving out, though that meant the attackers were down before they even left their hidden base.

The squad moved out under the cover of the tech’s electronic warfare and the heavy damage if the enemy assault. Preplaced heavy weapons took out the two turrets with a line of sight on the portion of the wall they went over, then they began to leapfrog forward, half the team covering as the other half advanced.

They were halfway to the compound when the tech sent a tactical update to their omni-tools. The soldiers kept their heads on a swivel, ignoring the new information while Braun and Kaiden pulled it open. The satellite imagery had highlighted the points the shuttles had come down, one landing on the roof of what they believed was the main lab complex while the other two had landed outside it, each sending a team in and digging in around the entrances to keep the remaining guards out. That was old news, though Kaiden noted that one of the shuttles was now a smoking wreck, indicating a Cerberus heavy weapons team had survived.

The new news was that another team was approaching the compound from the other side, having used a car bomb to blow their way through the outer wall, they’d taken out the auto-turrets with an airstrike and currently had a pair of gunships racing ahead to provide cover as they advanced. The tech didn’t have any idea who they were, but they were definitely not Coven and were heavily equipped. Given that their gunships ran a strafing attack on both Cerberus and the unknowns, they obviously weren’t on the same side. The interference of a _fourth_ party just made this situation so much better. Braun snapped his omni-tool shut while Kaiden was still absorbing what little information the satellite imagery and their spy cameras had provided on the new assailants. An unruly cluster of Krogan, Asari and Vorcha, they advanced fearlessly, certain in their air superiority.

As Braun ordered them to renew their advance, one of the remaining shuttles rose to challenge the gunships. Heavy mass accelerator turrets emerged from recessed compartments and began spraying fire in the direction of the gunships. The dedicated atmospheric combat craft broke off their strafing run and began to pound on the shuttle, easily evading its return fire. The break in air support let the remaining attackers fall back into the main lab building, sealing the doors, and undoubtedly digging in behind them, though even set to thermal, the satellite couldn’t see anything inside.

Kaiden almost tripped over a purple twining root as he tried to advance while keeping one eye on the scene unfolding ahead of him and the other on the overview unfolding on his omni-tool. Braun caught him and dragged him into cover. Before the more experienced officer could tear a strip off him, the tech’s voice came over their comm systems. “Sir, report from the port, Coven forces have arrested the officers in charge of AA and are redeploying multiple platoons towards the Cerberus compound. I’ve got similar movement from the city SWAT team, finally,* and a squadron of air-superiority fighters from Fort Destiny Falls are also being scrambled, with a reinforced squadron of gunships and troop transports to follow. You’ll be hip deep in Asari within thirty minutes.”

_*The police response had been delayed by Cerberus electronic warfare. They were undoubtedly also disrupting the local military response as well, but whoever was in charge of the garrison at the port was extremely competent and got her commandos moving fast and was willing to use civilian communication channels to convey orders when denied any other route._

“This is going to be fun. Everyone cover Yelchenko. He’s gonna be in charge of getting the intel we gather back to Command, if we end up getting cornered. We’re not here to start a fight with the Coven.”

Kaiden nodded. Yelchenko was the squad’s infiltrator and had the best chance of slipping the cordon which was undoubtedly about to be set up around the compound. Their original infiltration plan had depended on using one of the several secret exits, or the Screamer* Cerberus kept in the garage building. With a full scale military response, escape for the full team was unlikely. Especially given that the Coven was about to have full air superiority.

_*Screamers are relatively rare, being built on the chassis of a pre-eezo rocket, but with the addition of an eezo core. The combination is noticeably useless at everything except getting from the surface to orbit faster than anyone else, quite possibly even faster than AA fire pursuing you._

After a moment’s thought, Braun had them divert around the encircled main lab and head for the garage instead. They reached it and ducked inside about the same time that the second assailant force reached the rear of the Cerberus line attempting to fight its way into the main lab, having blown in the doors.

With the gunships engaged in an aerial duel with the shuttle, it was up to those on the ground. As Braun was hijacking an M29 Grizzly _*_ heavy combat vehicle, Kaiden kept an eye on the fight. An Asari had tossed a powerful **barrier** on a ridiculously large Krogan, who simultaneously triggered his armor’s **fortification** pack and rushed forward, brushing through the Cerberus lines, shotgun a rolling thunder as he flattened the lightly armored Humans who stood in his path. Weapons fire from a dozen men and women tried to burn through the biotic and technical protections swirling around the giant alien, doing nothing more than irritate him.

_*Though the Mako had replaced the Grizzly for most Alliance mobile forces, the more heavily armed and armored vehicle was still in use planetside and much respected for its ability to survive a pounding and keep on ticking._

Without pausing, the Krogan continued forward towards the blasted doors and stubborn defenders. Cerberus troops poured after him, through the hole he’d opened in the lines, desperate to take him out. This reaction, though understandable, was extremely foolish as it opened them up to withering fire from the Krogan’s support troops, coming up from behind.

Braun finally got the vehicle started and moving, snapping a quick order for the rest of the squad to follow him. Braun was no V-Series,* but he knew how to drive one of the old style Grizzly’s with a certain panache.

_*V-Series soldiers handle the Alliance’s Armored Fighting Vehicles. Though most** marines could handle military vehicles on basic maneuvers, as they were designed to be as close to idiot proof as possible, it took a V-Series soldier to truly make them dance._

_**With the noted and notable exception of Commander Shepard who had literally never managed to drive a vehicle without crashing._

Not that it took much in the way of panache to drive into the wall, after firing a dozen rounds to weaken it. Braun had chosen his location well, punching through into an external lab. Braun was out before Kaiden and the rest of the squad made it in. They made it into cover about the time a massive fireball lit up the sky to the east, nicely framed by the shattered buildings. Kaiden was no rookie, but this was starting to get ridiculous.

The comm unit screamed to life as the poor tech started screeching about an orbital strike being launched at Fort Destiny Falls. The whole place was gone, along with the gunships and transports that were supposed to put an end to this little squabble. Other Coven forces would doubtless be deployed, but not until the ship in orbit was dealt with. Ships on patrol duty were already moving to intercept the Q-ship* as quickly as possible, but it was going to be a while. Someone high up in the Coven navy had been bribed, suborned, or was simply incredibly incompetent and the tech wanted to find out which.

_*Q-Ships are heavily armed naval vessels, designed to appear like merchants (or just merchants with a lot of hidden guns bolted on, depending on design preference), usually used as pirate/raider bait. However, pirates, smugglers and raiders will often use similar designs, if they can afford them._

Braun ignored all that, it was irrelevant to their current situation and goals, a sharp order had everyone maintaining comm silence on peripheral issues and focus on the problem at hand. They needed to get the intel. Based on external observation, the largest power users and heat generators were three floors beneath them. From the sound of the firefights coming from all sides of the lab, none of the factions were giving up without a fight and the Alliance team was heavily outnumbered.

Braun waved Sergeant Samantha Powers forward and pointed at the floor. The explosives expert grinned and began to place heavy explosives to blow her way through the floor. They made it through a second floor that way, before running into resistance. Fortunately, the LOKI mechs Cerberus was relying on as last ditch security were not programmed to handle having the ceiling blown in atop them. Half of them went down to the explosion and the remainder were taken down by the Alliance squad, firing from the floor above.

When they dropped down to the next floor, they spread out to guard the entrances as Sergeant Powers prepared the last of the explosives she’d carried in. After that they’d be limited to those she could fabricate on her omni-tool and those wouldn’t be smashing through the materials of this compound.

Doors slid open Kaiden fell back into cover, dropping a **singularity** across the opening to catch any infiltrator. He didn’t see anything, but the door remained open, despite the distinct lack of anyone or anything nearby, except the **singularity** which should not have triggered the door’s sensors.

He dropped a second **singularity** across the entrance the instant the first one exploded outward, only to be tackled backwards onto the ground. A Salarian decloaked on top of him, pistol pressed against the weaker armor of his throat. “Human. Standard System’s Alliance armor and equipment. Identify yourself.”

“Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko. Identify yourself,” he countered as the rest of his squad bracketed the Salarian.

“Jondum Bau, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance.”

There was no list of Spectres. They didn’t* know if Jondum was truly a Spectre, but they believed it. Partly because there were few other reasons for a heavily armed Salarian to be running around a Cerberus base, partly because few people were crazy enough to draw the attention of real Spectres by falsely claiming the status, but mostly it was because it saved their pride. Despite being set up on the door, Jondum had still made it through and taken down one of their number, who he could kill with a twitch of his hand, while he was still at a distance from the remainder, wearing heavy armor and standing a good chance of surviving their counter-strike. If he was anything but a Spectre, they were pathetic, if he was a Spectre, then they were naturally outclassed by one of the best in the galaxy. “Good. Which of the attack forces topside is yours?” Kaiden asked, waving for the squad to stand down. They looked to Braun who nodded and lowered their weapons, spreading back out to secure the room.

_*In fact, there are several ways Spectres can prove their identity. However, C-Sec and Spectres hold most of them and the others are held by people at a level far higher than a lieutenant or captain._

“I don’t have any forces, I was just infiltrating alone. How many forces are attacking this place?” Jondum asked, face displaying shock, though he rose, removing the pistol from Kaiden’s throat.

“Two topside,” Braun explained, “one came down from orbit, used a shuttle to blow the barracks and dropped about sixty troops on the compound. Another force came out of the surrounding neighborhood. Coven forces are closing in from all sides as well.”

“Wonderful. Your target?”

Braun gave him a glare.

Bau nodded, “I’m here to gather all available intelligence on Cerberus and its connections with the Coven.”

“Us too. And I assume most of our attackers as well. Fortunately, there’s no reason we can’t both get what we need.” Braun kept his eyes locked on the Salarian, watching for some sign of deception, scheming, or betrayal. If it was there, his training in cross-species body language wasn’t up to detecting it, which it might not be when dealing with a Spectre.

“No reason at all,” Bau agreed.

That statement was rendered somewhat less comforting as it occurred mere second before Powers set off the last explosion, blowing them a nice hole in the floor. It was almost certainly a coincidence, but it lent his words a certain unpleasant note of menace, or insincerity. Dropping down onto the bottom floor, they landed in a bathroom. Powers had burst through several pipes, so the place was flooding.

They’d outpaced the other invaders, who appeared to be attempting some sort of systematic search of the facility, without blowing large chunks of it apart. Given their numbers and apparent willingness and ability to keep Coven forces out of the way, this was less insane than Kaiden had originally thought. It still wasn’t an option for six, well, seven infiltrators.

With scanners mostly jammed by the material of the compound and no massive explosion to cover their entrance, they instead fell back on standard breaching tactics. One soldier hit the door, Powers dropped in an omni-tool generated flashbang, and the rest of them stormed the place. A flashbang wouldn’t do much against a properly equipped force, but it was better than nothing. If they’d had a proper team for this, they could have breached behind an omni-shield wielding trooper, but none of their unit were trained to use the new devices and Alliance brass were being touchy about deploying the things anywhere they might be captured. Seemed pretty pointless to have a weapon you were unwilling to use, but Kaiden wasn’t brass and was glad not to be.

Still, their breaching technique did a good job of frightening the bejeezus out of the maintenance woman walking over to see what had happened to the bathroom. Fortunately no one shot her, though it was a close run thing as she was wearing a Cerberus outfit and everyone was a bit wired.

A few quick questions made it clear that the woman was either simple, or very good at pretending to be simple and he either didn’t know anything, or was capable of pretending to be long enough for their infiltration to be detected. Braun gave up on him and used his omni-tool to generate some restraints while the squad’s medic stepped forward and sedated the woman.

The next two rooms went the same as the first, only without any people in them. The third was the room most of the power conduits were running into. If there was going to be a defense, it was going to be here. They entered with the flashbang, Jondum slipping past them, faster than anyone else, **cloak** slipping over his skin as he raced ahead.

The Salarian Spectre almost bounced off the massive, but unarmored form of a Krogan wielding a heavy pipe as an improvised melee weapon. The **cloak** was less help than it should have been, as though a Krogan’s eyes were more resistant to flashbangs than most other species, the engineers who programmed Alliance omni-tools accepted the risk of blinding other races more permanently in exchange for blinding even Krogan.

Blinded, but not disabled, the massive alien swung the pipe in desperate blind arcs, which Jondum’s momentum almost ran him into. However he managed to twist desperately and dive under the swing. Racing forward, he ignored the berserk Krogan and examined the rest of the room. The lab had another entrance on the opposite side which the Alliance had breached. Half a dozen small cells filled one side of the lab, all but one holding a Krogan prisoner. The rest of the lab was filled with scattered tables and lab equipment. Its only other occupant was another Salarian, dark red skin and bulging eyes, panicked and blinded by the flashbang, his pistol was out, but he had enough presence of mind not to fire it blindly, in a room filled with friendlies. Or experimental subjects, depending on your viewpoint.

The Spectre **overloaded** the shields of the other Salarian and tackled him. A quick blow knocked the pistol loose and trapped the Salarian’s hands. Omni-tool generated restraints snapped shut around one wrist and a powerful yank flipped the man over. It was a dead classic takedown and when it was over, Maelon Heplorn’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Again.

Braun ordered the Krogan to stand down. Loudly. Then he realized the stupidity of that, with the alien deafened by the flashbang. A wave of a hand sent two of the squad to secure the computer terminal and begin downloading its files and another pair to check on the Salarian Spectre. The last of them, including Kaiden, separated and took up covered positions far enough away from the Krogan to be able to dodge away if charged, but with clear lines of sight.

All of them had the good sense to take cover in places which were also shielded from the door they’d entered through. Though they’d set up various traps on their way down, intended to protect the holes they’d blown in the base, as they’d closed in on their destination, being able to maneuver had taken priority over security and their small numbers made any significant rear-guard impractical. Still, anyone who burst in after them wouldn’t be able to unload on their backs. First, they’d need to blow through some shoddily constructed lab equipment, then they could unload on their flanks.

There was a tense, awkward silence while everyone waited for the Salarian and the Krogan to recover. Well, everyone except the team working on the computer, as they were busy trying to figure a way through the STG grade encryption on the computers without turning them into melted piles of slag. It was not going well. The pair of them were skilled combat engineers, but that did not equip them to crack encryption. The tech back at the base was their best shot, but it was taking an embarrassingly long time to set up the high bandwidth data jack, not because the task was difficult, but because the lab was littered with jamming devices intended to prevent exactly that* action. Disabling them was tricky as the lab was setup to melt down in the event that they were sabotaged. That problem, at least, the engineers were trained to handle.

_*In fact, they wouldn’t have had any chance of success if not for their good fortune in that the first set of raiders hadn’t shredded the main jammers during their drop. Those were the ones which had blanketed the entire area and would have blocked even the Alliance’s high-frequency comms. Though lucky, this was not coincidental as the raiders had very clearly targeted the jammers, including those the Alliance hadn’t been aware of._

Though the Salarian had been screaming, his words finally began to make sense as he recognized that he was pinned by another Salarian with two humanoids, not in Cerberus armor standing behind him. “Don’t hurt her!” he shrieked.

Given that the Krogan recovered at almost the same time, her superior regenerative abilities counteracted by being a lot closer to the flashbang, his plea was almost immediately drowned out by the Krogan’s roar and charge towards one of the scattered soldiers. This rapidly demonstrated that the Humans had underestimated the alien’s resistance to small arms fire as she rushed through the burst of automatic weapons fire and smashed through the flimsy lab table, sending the soldier using at as cover sprawling. The pipe rose over her head for a massive two handed blow that would have either shattered armor, or the pipe itself, neither of which would have been good for the soldier.

Fortunately, Kaiden finally acted, a little late, but fast enough, the biotic **pull** ripping even the massive alien off her feet and sending her tumbling towards him. A roll brought him clear of her path and his assault rifle rose, tracking the floating creature as did the rest of the squad. Fortunately for the Krogan, the others were so busy being distracted by seven hundred pounds of floating alien muscle to bother firing at her. 

“Firka, Firka, don’t do anything stupid! Don’t hurt her!” the Salarian screeched.

Bragus Firka glared at them all, including the pinned Salarian. “Don’t whine, Maelon, it’s pathetic. Try to die with a bit of dignity,” she grinned in a manner which had nothing to do with humor. “And a weapon in your hand. Even if it is just a scalpel,” she grunted, “scientists,” the word was somewhere between a curse and an endearment. 

“We aren’t here to kill you!” Kaiden said, putting all the sincerity he could into his voice. Braun let him do things like that, on the basis, as he’d explained, that Kaiden’s boyish naiveté made people believe him. Especially since he was such a patently _bad_ liar. 

“No, I’m sure a bunch of Humans broke into this heavily fortified underground base to let me experience zero gee for the first time in four centuries,” the floating Krogan said with unstereotypical verbosity and entirely stereotypical venom.

The next five minutes were awkward as Kaiden wasn’t about to let the Krogan down until he was sure she wouldn’t make another attempt on their lives and she wasn’t eager to give them any such assurances. Maelon’s pathetic attempts to either command or convince the woman did not carry the day. Braun’s explanation that they could just blast her to bits did not carry the day either, though it did draw a pipe hurled like a javelin with sufficient force to knock the intelligence officer flat, though it was not quite fast enough to trigger his kinetic barriers.

As Braun lay there, gasping for breath, the doors on the other end of the lab opened and a flashbang flew into the room. The rest of the squad responded automatically with a barrage of omni-tool generated grenades* and dives for cover, as their helmets automatically went black and audio inputs blanked out all external input. Kaiden misjudged the distance and accidentally slammed hard into his chosen piece of cover. Braun managed to pull himself behind something as he tried to breathe.

_*Fortunately, the Krogan women were in cells intended to restrain Krogan and were therefore fully capable of surviving omni-tool generated grenades._

Firka hit the floor with a solid thump and grabbed the nearest heavy object which was some sort of, undoubtedly expensive, piece of lab equipment. Before she could decide who to bludgeon with it, the doors opened again and a Krogan rushed in,* biotic **barriers** , mass effect shielding and a **fortification** pack shielding him from the storm of fire he expected.

_*The flashbang had given them a chance to deploy scanners to get a look in the room without getting shot, but they’d had to wait out the soldier’s automatic and violent reaction._

It would have come indeed, if their IFF systems hadn’t screamed warnings at them that they were about to fire on friendlies. Their integrated weapon systems wouldn’t fire on friendlies unless overridden, which no one could remember how to do in the face of a gigantic, furious Krogan. This was why hacked IFFs tend to lead to one-sided slaughters.

Fortunately, the system had not been hacked, or the Krogan would undoubtedly have shot them down while they stood there being surprised. Even more fortunately, the Krogan was a disciplined soldier, who, despite fighting his way through the underground complex, had not succumbed to blood rage and retained sufficient control not to fire when his armor’s systems bleated warnings about blue-on-blue fire.* Well, either that, or he couldn’t remember how to override his weapons automatic safeties either. It took several tries for him to remember what the words meant, but with no one firing he didn’t bother charging either.

_*Blue-on-blue is an archaic term for friendly fire. It is still used by the Alliance for reasons which aren’t entirely clear._

Braun recovered first and demanded to know who was over there.

“Gatatog Nexor, Project Overwatch Auxiliary Commander. Identify yourself,” the Krogan answered with a grunt and a betrayed look at his shotgun. Behind him, a scarred Asari, missing half her scalp tendrils, moved to guard his back, wearing the light armor of a biotic adept, with a heavy pistol in one hand, but carefully aimed downwards.

Braun stepped out of cover, barely, clearly ready to dive back in if anyone fired on him. “Captain Braun, Alliance Intelligence.”

“Seriously?” Firka asked, staring from one group of soldiers who owed their allegiance to the Alliance to the other. “Did anyone who isn’t working for the fucking human government break in here?”

“The Shadow Broker’s forces did,” Nexor snapped, tension draining out of him as a slim blue hand came to rest on his hump. The Asari moved with the usual grace of her ilk, but slight changes in her body indicated that she was at least a Matron, if not a Matriarch. Other than perhaps the Krogan, she was the oldest person in the room by half a century, at least.

“Cerberus was already here!” Braun said at the same time.

The female Krogan snorted at that. “Like they don’t work hand and glove with the Alliance.”

Braun ignored that comment as Kaiden sputtered angry denials, turning his attention to Nexor. “You’re sure those are the Shadow Broker’s forces?”

“Can’t be certain, but I recognized a couple of the Shadow Broker’s favorite mercs and it has all the signs of one of the Broker’s* direct actions. Overwhelming force and a complete lack of concern for collateral damage, as well as flawless intelligence on the target and the use of a large group of disposable mercenaries and a smaller core of more reliable agents.”

 _*Though some speculate the Shadow Broker is in fact a consortium of intelligence operatives, especially given that the Broker has existed for as long as the Council, those who have had dealings with the Broker are generally confident the Broker is a single person. However, the Broker’s heavy use of voice modulation and English’s lack of a single-person neuter pronoun make discussing the Broker somewhat difficult for those who seek to avoid falling into the trap of believing they possess knowledge regarding the mysterious figure which they do not. Even something as simple as the Broker’s gender._

“He’d have taken us out before launching an attack,” Kaiden countered.

“I kept our location strictly need to know. And no one off-world needed to know. The Broker wouldn’t know where we were,” Braun interjected, giving Kaiden a look which shut the younger soldier up.

Maelon gave a little mewl of distress at the idea that he might be captured by the Shadow Broker. What the information broker did with captured agents to make them talk wasn’t known, because the STG had yet to recover any of them alive. However, the autopsies indicated some form of brain surgery, as well as more traditional means of information extraction.* Regardless, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be fun and absolutely certain it would be lethal. Unlike the STG and Cerberus and other powers, the Shadow Broker didn’t bother to invest in R&D, as theft was so much easier and more profitable.

 _*For some reason, even most hardened intelligence operatives don’t like to refer to it as torture when it’s their side doing it, as if the fact that they believed their actions were just meant that it was not torture. This is most amusing because it presupposes either that the meaning of words changes based on who speaks them, or that most people believe their opponents not merely to be unjust, but to be_ knowingly _unjust, a remarkably uncommon trait amongst the species of the galaxy. The one thing they all share, for all their differences in biology and culture, is an unimaginable capacity for self-delusion and justification of their own actions._

If the Shadow broker got him, he wasn’t looking at a new boss, but at the end of the line. Side chosen for him, again, Maelon became a font of information, though he only had very limited information about the facility as Cerberus hadn’t been stupid enough to let the former STG operative access to anything outside his lab and quarters and Maelon was a geneticist and a biochemist, not a cracker or a hacker. The few tricks he’d picked up with the STG didn’t help as the Cerberus data core wasn’t connected to the lab computers. He was pretty sure their computers were somewhere on the same level as he was, for the simple reason that it was the most secure level of the compound. Moreover, he’d seen guards heading to and from a location somewhere to the south of his lab.

To show good faith, he unlocked his own files for Braun’s troops to download. Not that they’d do much good, he was still trying to unravel the Genophage from the Krogan genetic structure it was built into. Cerberus had been pushing him to attempt Human and Krogan testing on the prisoners they already have, or were offering to get. Maelon had just been talked into beginning Human* testing when this all happened.

_*He’d managed to convince them that the difficulty of getting additional Krogan females meant that Krogan testing would have to wait until they could see how successful Human testing would be. Given that there were a lot more Humans and they were easier to kidnap, this was a reasonable, if amoral position. Maelon had been quite surprised at the ease with which he’d convinced members of the Human-Supremacist organization to kidnap fellow Humans to be experimented on by an alien who, it had to be said, bore a disturbing similarity to the earlier Human conceptions of kidnapping aliens. When asked, they’d explained that they’d just be repurposing certain assassinations into kidnappings. That was less encouraging than he’d anticipated._

“Why do we think the files are still intact after four separate incursions?” Kaiden asked.

“Four?” the Asari put in.

Bau introduced himself and both of the Project Overwatch auxiliaries tensed up at that. Before they could work themselves into a panic attack in the face of one of the legendary Spectres, he answered Kaiden’s question, turning their attention back to the issue at hand. “The question isn’t why would we think the files are still intact, but why would the Broker think they would survive the assault. The Broker triggered this situation, so it was the Broker who ensured the files would survive it. Or failed to do so.”

The Alliance soldiers didn’t have any real response to that, so they all agreed to head off and grab the files. Or fail to do so in some gloriously impressive manner. Unfortunately, they also needed to get Maelon, _his_ files and the half dozen civilian Krogan (or as civilian as Krogan get, which isn’t very) out of the middle of a compound under siege.

Displaying the sort of brilliant strategic thought that had made him a Captain in the Alliance Military. Braun turned to Kaiden and told him to handle it. The Lieutenant was not thrilled by this order, but would do his best to carry it out and as the only biotic amongst the Intelligence team, he was also the only one who the Krogan women couldn’t simply crush. Well, unless they took him by surprise.

Nexor, taking pity on either his fellow Krogan, or the irritated junior officer, assigned him a pair of Asari maidens to act as support.

After breaking out a supply of weapons for the prisoners, Kaiden led the way, as best the half-a-dozen angry, formerly imprisoned Krogan would let him. Amusingly, the Shadow Broker’s troops kept the Coven forces off them. Three brief fire fights, a stolen shuttle, _two_ crash landings, three “borrowed” aircars, four blatant lies, one called bluff, a high-speed chase by Cerberus’s forces, an embarrassing ditching of all their equipment after discovering the bugs, an even more embarrassing explanation of one naked Human male and eight naked alien women to Coven forces and one worrisomely affecting kiss later, they managed to pull into one of Braun’s safe-houses. 

Discovering that Braun, Bau and Nexor had beaten them back to base, with the intelligence they were looking for,* because all available forces had been decoyed into chasing them, did not make Kaiden happy. Swallowing rage, he saluted politely and went in search of a bathroom and a bed. Neither of which was easy to find in an overrun safe-house. Firka and her cohort were less inclined to swallow rage and more inclined to throw things. That did not make it easier to find a bathroom or a bed.

_*Apparently the Shadow Broker had compromised one of Cerberus’s techs, but the woman wasn’t able to get the information out. When the Broker’s forces attacked, she prevented the automated systems from flushing the server’s data and used a program he provided to hack the automated defenses and use them to prevent Cerberus’s confused and assailed troops from overrunning the server._

The intelligence coup of the year and Kaiden missed out on it. As he was surrounded by people whose lives he saved, he didn’t complain too much about it. Especially when the Asari decided they found him more interesting than a safe-house with no extranet connection and that, since he’d claimed a serious open space by virtue of grumpiness and aroma,* they would join him. After that, his grumpiness basically evaporated.

_*The others had even had time to shower, which had made Kaiden even grumpier when denied access to the bathroom. Fortunately for the rest of his night, he did manage to shower, after claiming the only bedroom with an attached bathroom._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome.


End file.
